Florida! - A State of Differences

Since my parents live on a shelter island, we had to cross at least one bridge (usually several) to get anywhere. Several of those were drawbridges, which was exciting for us - although probably annoying for the locals.

This is something we're not used to where we live. No drawbridges here.

And the bridges weren't the only things that were completely different from what we categorize as "normal" at home.

For one... McDonald's Happy Meals. Seriously.

At home, the red box with the yellow smiley face on it no longer has cookies inside. In fact, I can't remember the last time it did. But down in Florida, we were shocked to see Little Dude pull out a bag of cookies! Our minds were racing: What?!? We're getting cheated out of cookies back home! Should I write a letter of complaint? How can I get some cookies?

Luckily for Hubby and I, Little Dude didn't want his cookies. We wandered down memory lane as we split the pack. They were just like we remembered. Yummm...

Another thing we had to get used to was how we ordered our tea. The following conversation took place at a few locations:

"We'd like one sweet tea and three regular teas."

"We don't have regular tea."

"What?"

"We only have sweet tea and unsweetened tea."

It took a few times before I figured out that "regular" to us is unsweetened, but we were in the south where sweet tea is "regular." We probably confused them as much or more than they confused us.

One other linguistic difference we encountered involved what we call "Early Bird Dinner." At my parents' favorite restaurant - Panama Hattie's - it is romantically called "Sunset Dinner." The fact that it happens several hours before sunset wasn't lost on us. But that didn't keep us from enjoying our seafood.

Us at Panama Hattie's

Plus, Panama Hattie's was on the waterfront and had a view of one of those drawbridges.

And yes, we did order our tea correctly there!