Tampa to Tampa via St. Augustine and Daytona

One good thing about US is that you can cover long distances in short intervals due to the roadways and infrastructure in place. A travel that'd take about 10 hours at the least back in India would not even take 5 hours in the US even if you are always traveling within the speed limit (70 miles per hour is the speed limit in most roads but almost everyone drives at 80 mph and we drive even faster with the speeds sometimes crossing 120 mph). The result - you can plan trips at the last moment, comfortably arrange everything online and travel in your car.

We planned a trip on Friday and covered St. Augustine (a historical ?! place in FL) and Daytona (yet another Floridan beach) in the past couple of days. Apart from the usual solo and group snap collection for Orkut, some photographic experiments, food and roaming; I did find a few other things quite interesting in this trip.

First, the ability of Americans to make a big show out of nothing! The St.Augustine fort is the oldest fort in whole of US and surprisingly the fort was built only in the 1600s which is just over 400 yrs back. With the facilities, good orators and the past era costumes; they made thousands of visitors look at the place as if it was the most historic spot in the whole world! Back in India, we have a lot of temples, buildings and architectures that are thousands of years old but hardly any effort is taken to maintain them and some of them are not even known to Indians in other states.

Second, the revenue that is generated out of this vacationing craze. In India, people tend to save a lot which beyond question is a good habit. But even those who tend to spend money don't have much choices because the spots within India and well known across India could be numbered; thanks to the Government's strenuous efforts to hide these spots from visitors. In US, if you cover 5 different varieties of places viz cities with huge sky scrapers, old cities, theme park laden areas, hills and beaches; chances are that you won't find any more different places wherever you go. But still you could see a host of Americans traveling at every possible opportunities to different parts of US just because of the internet marketing and complete usage of technology to their (the Government/property owner) favor.

Third, on a lighter note the fun that we had in beach sports. Assembling a gang, going to some good beach and playing some sport is tiresome but refreshing. Even volley ball in strong winds and cricket in soggy beach sand was absolutely entertaining. In normal days, either so many people don't get together or there is always some other work that might take priority. So dedicating sometime of life for vacationing really helps!

Let's hope that meaningful vacationing is promoted in India and the beauty and majesty of the tourist spots and the ancient Indian tradition is taken to all corners of the world!