Saturday October 9th

[08:26 EDT]

Today is another travelling day. This time, we are heading North and over to Sanibel Island (and the most expensive toll road we've yet found). It will also be the first time we've been able to unpack our cases - so far we've left almost everything in the cases so we can move on with less aggravation. This time, with four nights booked, it'll be worth unpacking.

Before we check out, however, we are going for a short visit to a farmers market that should be nearby on a Saturday. The part of Naples that we are in is full of antique shops, art galleries and the like, so it should be interesting to see what the farmers come up with!

[15:34 EDT]

Arrived at Sanibel - into our room safe and sound. We were trying to get the same room as before, but it was already booked :( Instead, we are in a room above the old one, so a slightly higher view!

One good thing about this place over Naples is that the wi-fi here is a full signal ;) We'd had to struggle with one bar strength in the Cove Inn which made for some infuriating Skype calls. This should be much better.

The farmers market was a small affair, situated in the car park behind the main restaurants. Despite it being small though, it's not often you get to see iguana and black panthers in these sort of places.

It was the local nature reserve raising awareness about their organisation. The cage behind temporarily housed a black panther - as we were told yesterday on our cycle ride, these panthers are living in the wild in the Florida Everglades.

My only purchase from the market was a large bag of kettle-corn for $6

That might last a while...

From there, we slowly made our way north to Sanibel. We'd been advised to make use of the beach road that runs behind Fort Myers rather than do the rat-run on the interstate. As we were not in any hurry we took that road, stopping now and again at shops on the way.

We arrived at 2:40pm and are now semi packed away. The complimentary basket has just arrived - not sure about the hard boiled eggs though...

[22:48 EDT]

Finished off the afternoon by floating around the pool :) Linda was reading her Kindle on a chair beside the pool. Eventually, the sun dipped behind the buildings and it got too cold to sit there.

We popped out for a meal then on our return, I noticed that it was very very dark out by the sea - it's just gone past a new moon. So I tried to get some night photos down by the sea's edge.

We've booked up to do a speedboat tour tomorrow at 12:30 - it should take us all around the island. Linda's hoping for some dolphins - the closest we've come so far is a glimpse of a dorsal fin yesterday when we were waiting for the sun to set.