(…no, not in New York.)

Ryan and I have realized that whenever we go on holiday, we never take a break. Do you find the same? We always travel to places that we want to actually see, so we end up racing everywhere in a bid to do everything humanly possible. I reckon part of it is because my number of vacation days halved when I started working in the U.S. (hmph), so I have to make the most of my free time. And while sometimes I daydream about a lazy sunny vacation, in reality, we’d both get pretty antsy if we were sitting on a beach for more than two hours.

During our Florida trip, Ryan and I refused to stay in one place. So on the day I turned 29 (gah), we took a drive a few hours south to islands he’d visited before and promised I would love: Sanibel and Captiva.

We crossed all sorts of skinny islands to get there, and when we eventually reached Sanibel, our first stop was, naturally, for ice cream. Ice cream in January. Florida 1 New York 0.

Next up – the J.N. (Ding) Darling National Wildlife Refuge, which takes up a third of the island.

We jumped out to take a trail and spied bright pink spoonbills, cormorants drying their wings in the sun and scores of crabs crawling in trees (the stuff of nightmares). And during the entire trail, I kept my eyes peeled for alligators – partly out of hope we’d spot one, partly out of fear if we did.

After spending so many months surrounded by city smog, it’s always amazing to just be outside surrounded by green, wildlife and sheer space.

We started to leave the park – and just as we thought there’d be no alligators to wave us off, we neared the end of the trail and came across this guy.

He was happily snoozing on the bank until Ryan scuffed his foot and his eyes snapped open. We decided to move on sharpish.

We jumped in the car and continued along the island until we reached Captiva, an even smaller, skinnier island that basically has one main road through its middle. While there, we did get our beach visit after all.

Our whole trip to Florida was amazing – covering all those miles on the road and seeing a real variety of places made us feel like we’d been away for ages. Maybe one day soon we’ll get a proper break, but I’m not fussed if we do because our busy Florida trip was pretty perfect.

Thanks for having us, Florida! Back to you, NYC.