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Florida beaches are better than Hawaii beaches. Warmer in the summer, white sand. Well unless you're a surfer.
I have to respectfully disagree. From the beaches I have seen in Florida, too much white sand, not enough greenery. I find them kind of boring. Also, while the water in Florida is warmer, there is not much to see when snorkeling. I have heard that there are good places near Florida to snorkel, but who have to take a boat to them.
The Gulf of Mexico beaches in Florida are really nice. I didn't find anything on the Atlantic Coastline to be that attractive. Kind of rougher feeling, not very soft sands, etc.
Speaking of Hawaii beaches....Waikiki is fairly underrated beach, it seems to me. It has a great breakwall, perfect for families with kids. Lots of palm trees to sit under. It's world famous, so not entirely underrated, but many people seem to bypass Waikiki altogether for Maui beaches, etc.
In comparison to SOUTH BEACH, MIAMI. I understand the glamour of the urban environment nearby, and all the clubs and restaurants and such. However, I found the beach to be mediocre. Not clear ocean like the Gulf of Mexico side, and not palm trees anywhere near the ocean, for relaxing under. Of course there are some by the sidewalk and urban setting, but nothing near the beach itself where people want to relax while overlooking the ocean itself.
Daytona Beach is one of the ugliest beaches I saw in Florida. No idea why that place is so glamourized in pop music, and hollywood movies.
I quite liked Clearwater Beach on the Gulf of Mexico side, as well as the ones south all the way down. I've heard the Panhandle has some of the best, but I've never been to those. In Hawaii, I don't remember seeing a bad beach.
As a kiwi living in Oz I might be able to shed some light.
N.Z is a very small place, everybody is somebody's cousin. When I visited the states I was shocked by the sheer mass of choices of everything. N.Z does not have that and no one seems to bothered by it. You will find that were are behind in technology, e.g internet. Compared to the states it is much slower and more expensive. The smallness however is also good. You can go to the mountains and the beach all in the same day and be home for dinner on time. N.Z also works a little on 'island time' if your familiar with the term.
The beach culture in N.Z is huge. Most of my childhood was spent at the beach. The beaches are beautiful, but of course compared to what you would be used to, much colder.
Immigrating to N.Z has become much harder in the past ten years, but kiwi's are very chilled out people. It's a very culturally diverse place, and as a child you are taught to respect that. In terms of childhood it was an amazing place to grow up in.
I must warn you though, it is very different from American culture. Not in a negative or positive way, and you may not notice it on holiday but it is still very different and you should prepare for that.
Florida sounds great on paper...we have visited 4 times because of how it sounded on paper. Tampa, Orlando, Melbourne, and Miami. Florida feels and looks like it was hit by a hurricane and then just left as-is. Everything feels completely worn out, and not in an old small town village kind of way, but in a "we can't afford to fix it" kind of way. Plus my mother-in-law lives in Florida and I would prefer to keep her a plane ride away, a long one preferably. lol
One thing about Hawaiian’s schools. The population is predominantly Asian. Mostly Japanese and Polynesians. Since they are the large majority, there is no need or desire to assimilate to the Caucasians way of life. They keep their culture very strong.
A friend of mine accepted a job in Hawaii, thinking that the pay was good, and what fun to get to live in Hawaii! He was shocked by the cost of life. Even basic things like milk. But the worst part was that his son could not attend public schools. Very tall, white as milk, red hair with freckles. It was impossible to put him in a public school. 80% of the kids were Japanese, and raised to keep between themselves. The boy was teased beyond belief. You can already hear the word “giraffe” and so on… Then when the teachers, all Japanese, reluctantly admonished the kids to stop the harassment, he was simply ignored. Like he did not exist. Like if he said something, kids would act like they did not hear anything. There was a few Caucasian kids in the school, but they were born and raised in Hawaii, so were better adjusted, and none had physical features as striking as the tall red hair boy. Caucasians kids who go to public schools in Hawaii are usually from poor families, and form their own clans, in response to the Asians “clans”. A little bit like tough “Red Necks”. So there was no other way than to put him in a private school. And even the cheapest of private school is very expensive on a budget.
Most Caucasian kids in Hawaii go to private schools. Even Obama, who came from a very modest family, had to go to private school. Because unless you are Asian or a native Polynesian, you will just not fit.
Military kids, who traveled to foreign countries, or Hawaii, live on the base and go to U.S. schools on the base. The base is like their own little “America” .They are quite insulated from the natives, and mingle only if and when they wish. Lane_change, I assume that you did not go to a Japanese school when you lived in Japan.
As far a Florida, I have no idea what you are talking about. The place looked like you describe only after the 2004 huricanes. For about 1 year, there was a scarcity of material and manpower to fix things. Everything has been fixed, rebuilt to higher building code standard, which is a very good thing. Brevard main resources come from International tourism (Dollar is cheap), and snow birds coming all the way from England, Canada, Sweden..... It is very well kept, maintained, and a beautiful gorgeous place to live in. The cliche Paradise is used iften, but is very appropriate here.
The only bad part about living in Cocoa Beach, is that my kids will never be happy anywhere else. If they are obliged to relocate, their heart will always be where they could grab their surf board and go surfing with their friends after school (or work), and go to DisneyLand whenever they wish. Wear shorts and T-shirts in January. Can you imagine? Things other kids can only dream of.
We do take a once a year trip to places like Yosemite, Grand canyon, Alaska, Sierra Mountains in winter, and enjoy the change of landscape. But boy, are we glad to come back home!
Sorry for your mother in law. But this one, I surely understand. Maybe an alligator will eat her. There are boa constrictors in the Everglades that will find her yammy. You can also put a restraining order against her, not allowing her within a mile
Last edited by SurferCocoa; 12-28-2011 at 08:07 AM..
One thing about Hawaiian’s schools. The population is predominantly Asian. Mostly Japanese and Polynesians. Since they are the large majority, there is no need or desire to assimilate to the Caucasians way of life. They keep their culture very strong.
A friend of mine accepted a job in Hawaii, thinking that the pay was good, and what fun to get to live in Hawaii! He was shocked by the cost of life. Even basic things like milk. But the worst part was that his son could not attend public schools. Very tall, white as milk, red hair with freckles. It was impossible to put him in a public school. 80% of the kids were Japanese, and raised to keep between themselves. The boy was teased beyond belief. You can already hear the word “giraffe” and so on… Then when the teachers, all Japanese, reluctantly admonished the kids to stop the harassment, he was simply ignored. Like he did not exist. Like if he said something, kids would act like they did not hear anything. There was a few Caucasian kids in the school, but they were born and raised in Hawaii, so were better adjusted, and none had physical features as striking as the tall red hair boy. Caucasians kids who go to public schools in Hawaii are usually from poor
families, and form their own clans, in response to the Asians “clans”. A little bit like tough “Red Necks”. So
there was no other way than to put him in a private school. And even the cheapest of private school is very expensive on a budget.
Most Caucasian kids in Hawaii go to private schools. Even Obama, who came from a very modest family, had to go to private school. Because unless you are Asian or a native Polynesian, you will just not fit.
Military kids, who traveled to foreign countries, or Hawaii, live on the base and go to U.S. schools on the base. The base is like their own little “America” .They are quite insulated from the natives, and mingle only if and when they wish. Lane_change, I assume that you did not go to a Japanese school when you lived in Japan.
As far a Florida, I have no idea what you are talking about. The place looked like you describe only after the 2004 huricanes. For about 1 year, there was a scarcity of material and manpower to fix things. Everything has been fixed, rebuilt to higher building code standard, which is a very good thing. Brevard main resources come from International tourism (Dollar is cheap), and snow birds coming all the way from England, Canada, Sweden..... It is very well kept, maintained, and a beautiful gorgeous place to live in. The cliche Paradise is used iften, but is very appropriate here.
The only bad part about living in Cocoa Beach, is that my kids will never be happy anywhere else. If they are obliged to relocate, their heart will always be where they could grab their surf board and go surfing with their friends after
school (or work), and go to DisneyLand whenever they wish. Wear shorts and T-shirts in January. Can you imagine? Things other kids can only dream of.
We do take a once a year trip to places like Yosemite, Grand canyon, Alaska, Sierra Mountains in winter, and enjoy the change of landscape. But boy, are we glad to come back home!
Sorry for your mother in law. But this one, I surely understand. Maybe an alligator will eat her. There are boa constrictors in the Everglades that will find her yammy. You can also put a restraining order against her, not allowing her within a mile
I agree about Florida. It strikes me as having significantly newer and shinier housing than most of Hawaii - if that is important to a person.
I went to both off-base Japanese schools for my primary (K-2) years and then went to DOD schools on base through middle school. The Japanese are a generally friendly people and I never felt out of place even when we lived off base since my parents preferred to live in the city vs. on the base in smaller military housing. Growing up military though, we moved a lot, so I had to learn to assimilate quickly or face what your friends son did by always being the new kid or the outsider that was not part of the already formed cliques in each area. I even relocated during my senior year of high school and had to try and fit in. My children are still too young to have ever had to face those lessons and hopefully once we get grounded somewhere they never will. I'm not sure how old your friend's son was, but I would be moving with kids that are likely 4-7 years old and hopefully by middle school and high school when the cliques truly are present our kids will be considered local to an extent and have friends and such. At least that is my hope.
We try not to allow race to play a role in our decision making process, but I am only looking for English speaking locations since I don't speak anything but a little Japanese and a little French, and just don't want to have to learn a new language at this point in my life. And comparatively if I had to choose any race to be surrounded by, it would be the Japanese based on my background. I'm not sure what I did not see about Florida that was as nice as you describe, perhaps I just went to all the wrong places, but short of the downtown big business worlds, the normal day to day Florida looked white washed and sand blasted with busted roads and damaged buildings all over the place. The last time I was in Florida was 2 years ago (Miami) and the time before that was 4 years ago in Melbourne. I have not been to Tampa since 1999. Again, like art, to me a small town can have a bit of patina on it, it adds character, but a big city should look well kept and presentable because the worn out look doesn't give any sense of community pride or ownership. I feel the same way about Galveston, TX here...it's a dive. I have no need to go to some tourist infested area that looks like a worn down back alley. When we were in Kona a few years back it looked well kept and clean with some older shacks along the hwy that looked like they fit in with their environment. I like Florida for the warm water, weather, and cheap cost of living, but I don't think it would be a big enough improvement in quality of life compared to Houston outside of the fact that your beaches are prettier. Other than that, we have all sorts of stuff within a few hours drive as well....but Houston does not feel like home. It feels like it's just where I live because it's where I work.
What constitutes "great beaches," like everything else, is a matter of personal opinion. I've been down the east coast of Florida to Key West, and along the Panhandle, but not on the west coast. I thought that the beaches everywhere I went were very nice. The Panhandle beach sand is almost pure silica, so the beaches are sugary white, and the water is clear turquoise. When I lived in Atlanta, some friends of mine had a condo near Destin, and they'd throw a mutli-day bash over Labor Day weekend every year, which was a lot of fun. The climate is subtropical, meaning you can't swim year round, and there are no coral reefs or multi-colored fish. I have no idea what life is like in Pensacola or Panama City, or what the job situation is like. On the Atlantic coast, I remember the water being somewhat silty (not dirty, just not crystal clear) from rougly Jupiter on up to, well, Maine. I don't know whether the Atlantic water is silty all year, but it was every time I ever visited the northern Florida, Georgia, and Carolina coasts. There are beautiful beaches all up and down the Atlantic coast. Once you get to southern Florida on the Atlantic side, the water starts looking like what I think of as tropical. Once you get to the Keys, there are coral reefs and colorful fish.
I lived in L.A. and San Diego for a few years when I was a kid, and I thought Southern California set the standard for beaches, but having since seen the beaches in Hawaii and Florida, the So Cal beaches disappointed me in comparison on my subsequent return visits. They're not bad – they just don't seem as spectacular to me anymore.
Here in Oregon, we have some of the most spectacular beaches in the world. The problem is that the water is ice cold year round. When my wife moved her then-young sons here from Hawaii years ago, they made the mistake, on their first trip to the beach, of diving head-long into the water before testing the temperature. They quickly jumped out, crying, wondering what was wrong with the ocean that it would be so cold.
Although it's possible that a particular school in Hawaii had an 80% Japanese population, more likely the students were a combination of Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino, Lao, Hawaiian, and hapa (mixed-race), so that most of them looked Asian to one degree or another. The remainder would have been a mixture of Portuguese, Puerto Rican, and assorted white European. When my wife and I first compared our high-school and college yearbooks, the first thing I noticed was that almost everyone in her yearbooks had black hair – something I noticed again on my first trip to Hawaii with her.
The comments on here reiterate the fact that there are several places that meet most of the OP's needs and wants, but there's no perfect place that meets them all.
You are correct about Japanese in Hawaii. I described what my friend was telling me, and I think he called Japanese any Asian ethnic group.
I also always found Japanese people very polite (if not friendly), and respectful. But go figure out on what they really think!
The fact is that Caucasians are definitively a minority in public schools in Hawaii. Maybe it also happens because Caucasian parents put their kids in private schools? Even if Hawai is not in a foreign country, it has a very strong cultural bend. It is not as "standard" as you will find in the State. The U.S. is a "melting" pot of so many races and cultures. But in Hawai it is not as "melted" as in the mainland. Definitively not.
We have thought about the school system some, not because of the race concerns, but more so because of the relatively poor standard of the public education system in Hawaii. So we would have to look into the costs more if that is what we decide. I personally don't care for private schools for their lack of sports programs as well as their social differences compared to real life. I don't want to assume that all private schools are religious with uniforms and such, but that is my perception of them...and while my wife and I do have faith, I don't like the idea that a school would administer its own faith and values onto our children assuming that the school has some denomination that it follows, Catholic mostly.
As far as beach quality goes, I am not simply looking at the beach itself (ie: the sand), but the reef, the scenery, the vibe, the sound, the look, etc...just the overall experience. San Diego had a great vibe, but the water temps are cold, the waves are tiny, the crowds are immense, etc...it wasn't perfect. 100% better than Houston's ugly beaches and muddy water, but it is not at the level of the Florida beaches in my opinion as far as sand and water quality go, but I thought the beaches on Hawaii were better, to me, the small cutout beaches were great. They felt secluded with a great background, amazing water temperature and clarity, good surf in some areas...it was just a great feeling. Now the better surf spots that we went to had almost no beach at all, it was just a rocky mess that required you to get out to the break, lots of knicks and cuts to be found...not the beach I envision for my kids at this age, but if they do grow to love surfing then more power to them. Again, I grew up skateboarding, the San Diego ocean was just too damn cold for me to care, plus the waves were sub-par at best. I'm afraid New Zealand may be too cold for us, both in air temperature and water temperature. It is sure amazing to look at in pictures, but I'm not sure I want to be lured by the amazing views and feel then not be able to enter the water. I don't sail, never been sailing, yachting, etc...and I know New Zealand seems to have a rather large boating community, but that would be like me wanting to go play cricket or rugby. It's just not something I care about at all.
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