Nice time! Weather mostly cooperative in the mid to high 70s, but a couple mornings in the 60s. Shop owner shares with Jan her adage: "If our windows are closed and the ac is not on, it is the dead of winter." To us, it felt great. Our location at Zero Duval St put us right in the action. Our room overlooked (to the SW) the Gulf, Mallory Square, and three bollards (?) to which the cruise ships tied up. We had arrivals and departures daily, except for Wed. Every evening Mallory would fill with buskers--paid most likely by the city since the same acts showed up each night--to entertain the gathered throngs there to watch the sunset. They included a Spiderman, a hula hooper, a couple flaming, juggling acts, and more. An incredible amount of boat traffic plied the waters from the port--over our shoulders--into the Gulf. Really noticeable was when a couple liners dumped their human cargo on the village streets at the same time. Duval seemed very much like Bourbon St in NO. Barkers, T-shirt sellers, bars open to the street, music blaring, all mixed in with high level shops (e.g., Banana Republic; Coach), and restaurants. It was amazing to watch a liner come to a pier and use its side thrusters to ease up to the dock without destroying anything in its path, and then to leave and spin the ship 180 degrees essentially in place. They only had to motor about 800 yds to the south to make a turn to port and be in the Atlantic and out of sight to us. An open bar on Mallory had a jazz group (vibes, reed, bass, drums) each evening, that did nothing but latin, bossa music much to our delight. We heard Watermelon Man every night! (We never did visit them to see exactly where they were, because we didn't need to.)
We started this whole jaunt with a nice day trip through the 'Glades led by Jan's cousins, Jim and Janice Bishop who showed us more gators in the wild than we thought possible. Then we did our own day drive through another 'Glades section that ended up in a wonderful campground right on the Gulf. We got a pretty good feel for the area and concluded: Nice place to visit but....the traffic is horrendous and the drive to the Keys exacting and long.
My overall mission was to get out of socks, into sandals, out of pants into shorts, and out of sweaters into summer shirts. Mission accomplished! We walked daily for our food and drink and the local attractions. Of course, we saw the Truman southern White House and the Hemingway home, and did the trolley circuit. And we ate well, managing to choke down some new foods for us: grouper, wahoo, and gator bites. There was also time to hang by the pool, be brought a cold one, and make some Vitamin D, naturally.
Would we go back? Naw: been there, done that. But it was a fine experience and the time spent was about right.
And, I learned I can still travel. In fact, the warm weather with the ocean humidity seemed to agree with my arthritis. I had little problem walking 8-10 blocks at a time each day. Napped only one afternoon. But, I noted the long day back on the plane resulted the next day in a lot of edema in the feet and ankles. And, as the weather has changed here from spring back to winter for today, my arthritis is back big time. We might have managed another brief flight leg going (e.g., enough to get to the Caribbean Islands). That bears some thought for the future. Now all that remains is to figure out how to pay for our good time...
