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.. 

         

“Summertime” and the Living is Easy!

 

After the festival we headed south and spent the first night at Daytona Beach. Here we began to experience the warm Florida weather that draws us south each year. The next day we reached our destination of the Outdoor Resort at Port Saint Lucie, FL.

     

Our friends Jack and Mary Lou and Jack and Gerry were already encamped, and we settled in to a routine of dining out and having happy hour at each other’s coach as well as a pasta dinner at the clubhouse. 

      

After Jack and Mary Lou departed, we moved to a more mature part of the park to an owner’s lot that is landscaped and tiled. We are enjoying the lush tropical landscaping. One of our favorite activities is having lunch on the brick patio behind our coach overlooking the golf course and lake with fountain. Tina really enjoys these lunch outings as well.

     

We are also working on identifying the different varieties of palm trees based on training we got last year in Key West from a retired botanist who was staying at Boyd’s campground where we were. We are here for about two and a half weeks just relaxing and enjoying the beautiful warm weather. Of course, one of the first things we did was to head up to Nelson Family Farms to get some Indian River oranges and fresh squeezed orange juice.

Jack and Gerry took us on a “tour” of Stuart, a charming picturesque town just south of Port St. Lucie.  We ate lunch at the Pelican Café overlooking the water – a great place for fish tacos – and then walked along the waterfront and along the shopping street. 

     

Annual Migration South

 

We are happy to be making our annual RV trip to Florida, though we miss the bicycles. George’s doc says no bicycling until his back heals. We left home a day early albeit late in the afternoon. We drove only as far as the Acworth, GA Wal-mart where we spent our first night on the road in quite cold weather. We did have an unfortuitous event to occur wherein we accidentally pumped all our fresh water into the holding tank, so we spent a truly dry night giving new meaning to the term “dry camping.” The next day we headed on down to Fayetteville for a service stop at Richard and Jaye’s and enjoyed a nice visit and lunch and were feted with a bag of wonderful edible goodies. That evening we made it to the Baxley, GA Wal-mart where we bought fuel and spent the night.

              

The drive from Baxley to Brunswick is always George’s favorite as he loves the long, straight sections of highway with the tall, straight south GA pine trees. We spent the night at Brunswick at the Coastal Georgia RV Park which is new to us and a really nice park. We did this in order to be able to get over to the bluegrass festival on Jekyll early so as to get a good parking/camping spot. The new convention center is quite impressive, and we enjoyed the bluegrass festival. 

                    

The Little Roy and Lizzie Show was our favorite group this year.  The guitarist is the mayor of Ellijay, and his sister plays bass.  We enjoyed walking on the paved trail along the beach, and  Irene enjoyed browsing in the shops in the historic district.  The weather was moderate with some rain early.

             

The Big Easy

We had heard our RV friends talk about the wonderful RV park just off the French Quarter in New Orleans, so we had been wanting to go there for a while. Then we heard about the AARP convention in New Orleans (Sept. 20 – 22). We looked at the impressive programs and speakers and decided to go as part of our trip to the Country Coach International rally in Charlotte. New Orleans wasn’t exactly on the way, but we enjoyed every mile. The French Quarter RV Resort is two blocks off the French Quarter and the New Orleans skyline is is a dramatic sight.                                One day was “trolley day” and we rode most of the system. The St. Charles Street trolley in the Garden District was our favorite due to the mansions, universities, and general beauty of the area. We biked in Audubon Park and enjoyed the biking under the giant live oaks and seeing the graceful Greek Revival and Victorian mansions.                       
     
     
     
The Riverfront line runs from downtown to the open air market.
     
Bicycling was high on our agenda.  In addition to biking in Audubon Park, we caught the free Algiers ferry across the river. The ride gave us a great view of the New Orleans skyline, but the big lure of Algiers is the bike trail along the river. We had planned to bike in the French Quarter, but we found the streets to be too narrow and rough with too much traffic.  We also enjoyed bicycling along the river front on the New Orleans side of the Mississippi.      
     
               
     
           
     
We enjoyed two great restaurants in the Garden District, a Vietnamese and an interesting taqueria.  One day we went out to Metairie to enjoy the “real” New Orleans cuisine at a neighborhood seafood restaurant. George had a classic Oyster Po Boy while Irene had pecan crusted grouper.                
     
                
We enjoyed seeing the giant diesel powered pumps we had seen on TV that the Corps of Engineers built along with a new levy system to prevent New Orleans from flooding like it did during hurricane Katrina.
     
At the AARP convention which was held in the convention center we saw VP candidate Paul Ryan live while President Obama was streamed live via satellite. We heard political commentator couple James Carville and Mary Matalin live, and by the way they live in the Garden District. Also live was New Orleans chef Emerald Lagasse interviewed by Today Show host Hoda Cotb.  The Preservation Hall Jazz Band and other groups also performed, calling forth some real “movin’ “ on the dance floor.      

                          
 
The convention had great vendors and seminars and will be held in Atlanta next October. We will probably go again.