FL15 - Day 11 - PG to Venice

Not that Venice. But one that was going to be styled on Italianate architecture and loads of natural waterways.

We had to be up early to do final packing and have breakfast. In the end we handed in the keys just about ten minutes to spare.

The plan was to go to the Muscle Car City and then to the Octagon Wildlife Center before heading on I75 North.

In the end we did it in the other direction and went to see the animals first.

The wildlife centre is for animals rescued from zoos and private individuals. Amongst the inmates are tigers kept in back gardens, bears used for commercial reasons (!) and a hyena that lived in some guys office.

Sadly the camera did a better job of focussing on the wire of the cages than the animals.

From there we headed across to Punta Gorda to see the Chevy's and other cars from the muscle car era.

We had lunch in the diner before going in.







Then into the museum housed in a former Walmart!

And wow. The view of all those cars. All those restored cars.







The museum definitely worth the trip. The rest of the photos I took can be found here.

Once away from the museum, we took a leisurely drive up US41 N to Venice to the Inn at the Beach where we will spend the remaining days of the holiday.  It looked really nice and scores abut 9.6/10 on booking.com and similarly high on Tripadvisor.

Our room is on the ground floor facing the beach.

Once checked in we had a walk across to look at the beach. The "danger rip tide" warnings certainly put you off going in the water!  If caught you are supposed to float as best you can until it lets you go, some 200 yards off the shore! Yeah right.

In the evening we set off to find an Italian Restaurant on Tamiami Trail and failed and so went into Cassariano on West Venice Avenue. Casual but superior dining.  Not cheap but the meal was excellent.

Then back to bed. After a few lazy days we had done quite a lot today.

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