The Palm Beaches

After the Caribbean cruise we spent a few days back at the Outdoor Resort in Port Saint Lucie since we enjoyed it so much in January. We then went to the West Palm Beach area to John Prince County Park that we have visited for several years now. It is a marvelous bicycling spot with a seven mile loop trail. We also like being on the lake and enjoy seeing the water birds and ducks. It is near West Palm Beach, Palm Beach, and Lake Worth. The more we come to this area, the more we value it. We have explored points to the south including Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Each has some positive points, but we have concluded that the West Palm Beach area is the best of south Florida. There is much to do here, but we really enjoyed our visit to Worth Avenue  in Palm Beach, a very high end shopping district with stores like Tiffany, Gucci, and Channel to name a few.                                   What makes this shopping district unique are the side alleyways known as “vias.” We enjoyed the architecture and landscaping as well as lunch at Pizza Al Fresco at Via Mizner.                                                                West Palm Beach has a nice downtown area centered around City Place, a Mediterranean style shopping and dining venue, and Clematis Street, the traditional shopping and dining area. A free trolley connects the two. The city has also built a waterfront area where a green market is held every Saturday that has a generous number of vendors with food, flowers, produce and assorted items for sale.                     Then there is Palm Beach across the waterway with multi-million dollar homes and the famous Breakers Hotel.  Donald Trump has a spa there known as Mar-a-Lago that he claims is the greatest mansion ever build. Worth a look.  The winter weather is unmatched by cities on the west coast of Florida due to its location adjacent to the warm gulf stream current. West Palm Beach claims to be the cultural center of south Florida due to its museums, performing arts center and art shows. We went to a jewelry, art and antique show at the convention center that had items that you might expect to see in a museum, but here they were for sale. For instance, paintings averaged about $300,000. The jewelry looked like something Liz Taylor might have owned.  We also enjoyed a photography exhibit of Annie Leibovitz’s portraits at Norton Museum and the docent’s tour of the exhibit.  Green Cay Nature Center is a good example of nature showcased in Palm Beach County, and we attended a Nature Talk there, seeing a number of birds and a few turtles and alligators.                     We hope to be back next year.

Two Weeks in the Caribbean

 

This year we decided to take a cruise during our winter RV trip to Florida. We found a great place to store the coach in Tampa and to board Tina. We also switched back to Holland America where we have taken all of our previous cruises with the exception of last summer’s Alaska cruise on Princess. We clearly prefer Holland America because of the larger shower and because of the fresh orange juice for breakfast and better coffee.

We sailed out of Tampa on Holland America’s Ryndam about 5:00 p.m .on January 27, 2013, beginning our two week Caribbean cruise.

        

 

Our first stop was at Holland America’s “Half Moon Cay,” a small island in the Bahamas.   

        

Then it was on to San Juan, Puerto Rico. We enjoyed San Juan’s old town area and old forts. The visit was particularly meaningful to George because two of his doctors are from there.

                                     

           

        

                                 

We enjoyed returning to St. John, Antigua where the high view of Nelson’s Dock Yard is always impressive.

        

        

While we have enjoyed St. Thomas, Virgin Islands in the past, we are sad to say that the shopping district has deteriorated into a cheap carnival atmosphere where store hawkers pester shoppers at every turn.

Castries, St. Lucia was new to us. We took a tour of the island that took us atop a mountain where we got a good view of our ship in the harbor.

        

        

Our ship then sailed a couple of hours to the other end of the island to pick up passengers who had taken a tour across the island.  They returned to the ship by tender.  There at Soufriere we saw the Pitons, Gros Piton and Petit Piton.

        

We enjoyed our return to Willemstad, Curacao. We like the Dutch architecture and enjoyed the public market where vendors come in their boats from Venezuela which is only 58 miles away.

        

We found Aruba and Grand Cayman unremarkable, but enjoyed the balmy weather and the days at sea.  We both enjoyed the kitchen tour on the Ryndam and seeing how the food service is organized, and Irene enjoyed the florist’s flower arranging demonstrations.  The entertainment on the ship was excellent.  We especially enjoyed the 4 shows performed by the singing/dancing group and also the Adagios, a violinist and pianist from the Ukraine..