The drive down wasn't too bad except for the fact that we made about 4 stops before we were even out of South Carolina. We had to stop for gas, lunch, and getting a tire change but once we were finally on the road, the 7-hour drive flew by.

Once we got into Florida I noticed the palm trees everywhere, lining the roads, driveways, etc. I'm always fascinated by palm trees because we don't have them where I am from. The buildings are also very pretty, they have a historic feeling similar to Charleston.

Driving down, we passed several different outlet malls. We never made it to the outlets during our trip, but we did do a lot of shopping. They had a lot of the same shops as Charleston but we were still satisfied, we all ended up getting a lot of stuff.

Even though Florida is in the South, there didn't seem to be a lot of southern hospitality. The people were averagely nice but no one went out of the way for us or was overly nice. In Charleston, everyone was welcoming and every worker you came into contact with would go out of their way to improve your experience. We didn't have any bad experiences with Floridians, but I definitely wouldn't say there was southern hospitality.

We went to the beach for a couple of days and it was absolutely gorgeous. The water was pretty clear and felt clean. One thing we realized pretty fast was how strong the sun was. Even after applying sunscreen we all managed to get burnt. We learned from our mistakes and were very careful for the rest of our trip.

Overall, my trip to Florida was a success. We crammed so many activities into those 7 days and it's definitely a week we won't forget. I am definitely planning to return to Port St. Lucie and explore other parts of Florida in the future.