Road Trip II

When we last left off, Michelle and I were leaving St. Marys Georgia for her sister's place in Delray Beach Florida. After about a six-hour trip on I-95 and the Florida Turnpike we arrived. Jody and Carole have a nice two-bedroom, two-bath condo on the first floor in an over-55 gated community. The apartment features a Florida room (a type of screened-in porch) which overlooks a pond. We spent a couple of nights there before heading to Miami to board our cruise.

Delray is in the general vicinity of West Palm Beach; other nearby towns are Boynton Beach and Boca Raton. The area is mostly over-55 communities and most of the seniors are from the New York City area. A large proportion of the citizens are Jewish and this population supports any number of delis, bagel bakeries etc. Carole says it's like the lower east side with palm trees. She especially likes the fact that she can get all the authentic foods she enjoyed growing up Jewish in NYC. E.g. real chewy "water" bagels (simmered in water prior to baking as opposed to the doughy roll-like things that pass for bagels in most of the U.S.), excellent lox and nova salmon, kosher pickles from the barrel and so on. I can attest that the "deli" - cold cuts, rye bread etc. are very good. They took us to a place called "3Gs" deli and restaurant and the food was excellent. We also went to a place on the Intracoastal Waterway which is not far from their home which had a great view and excellent seafood.

Well, we arrived in Delray on a Friday and two days later, bright and early Sunday morning, we were up and on our way to Miami for our cruise. We checked on the Internet and found that there was parking for a fee at the Port of Miami, so we took Michelle's car, loaded the luggage, and off the four of us went.

Incidentally, M. came up with a good plan for the luggage on this trip. We both packed small bags with just what we needed for the trip to Florida, including the two stops on the way down, while we left the main bags packed for the cruise. This worked out well and saved dragging the bigger bags in and out of the car.

To continue, I drove us all to the Port of Miami and dropped my companions and our luggage off at the dock and proceeded about a quarter mile or less to the Port parking garage. One word of advice: they want payment in advance and they only take cash! Fortunately, I had the $100 in cash with me ($20/day x 5 days) but it was a bit of an unpleasant surprise - especially since the Port of Miami website indicated that credit cards were acceptable. Well, I hoofed it back to the dock and after a fairly short wait, we were allowed to board.

The "Norwegian Jewel"

The cruise went to Cozumel and Grand Cayman. Cozumel was fun: we booked a snorkeling trip aboard a large catamaran and later to a beach. The down side was that there were more people than fish in the water where we snorkeled; the up side was that they gave us all the free drinks we wanted. Grand Cayman was interesting. The waterfront had all the usual Caribbean t-shirt shops and duty-free joints, but one block inland were wall-to-wall bank buildings. I guess the place really is a big money laundromat.

The cruise ship itself was also a lot of fun. The ship had some halfway decent entertainment in their theatre and the food was pretty good. NCL has something which I like called "free-style" cruising which means among other things that even in the main dining rooms dress is resort casual i.e. golf shirt and slacks. It was the first cruise that I ever took that didn't require a suit and tie - I loved it (the first cruise I ever took as a passenger - back in the 70's -I had to lug a tux along!).

One thing they had that was neat were these automated self-service coffee machines. They had rows of buttons for both regular and decaf coffee, cappuccino, latte, etc. I wish I had one at home.

The ship had a number of specialty bars, one of which was a single malt scotch bar. I asked the bartender to recommend one to sample and she poured me a drink of something called "Aberlour" 16 year old single malt. It was probably the smoothest scotch I ever tasted. It was like a cross between sherry and scotch (not surprising-it is matured in old sherry casks). Anyway, it was very good and when my birthday came along after we got home, Michelle bought me a bottle.

All in all, then the cruise was inexpensive and fun, and we all agreed we would cruise NCL again.

Well, the ship finally made port in Miami and we piled in the car and headed back to Delray for a few more days' visit with Jody and Carole.

Next: Savannah GA and Mount Pleasant NC

Road Trip

This past month, we decided to accept a long-standing invitation to spend some time with Michelle's sister Jody and her partner Carole at their winter digs in Delray Beach Florida. The broad outline of the plan was for M. and I to make our way to Delray, spend some time there at their condo, the four of us then were to embark on an inexpensive (<$400/person) 6-day cruise out of Miami on the Norwegian Cruise Lines' "Norwegian Jewel" and finally return to spend some more time in Delray before returning to New Jersey. The first decision was whether to drive or fly to Florida. Since we were now both retired, I reasoned that we had no time constraints that would require flying (and renting a car in FL) so it made sense to drive. Also, I hate all the happy horsesh-t involved in going through an airport - from taking off my shoes to getting my luggage lost and I don't mind driving on an Interstate.


Well, we decided to drive, which worked out well for a number of reasons. First, we used Michelle's car (an Infiniti M-Class) which is extremely comfortable on a long drive, but at the same time handles well and lacks the "mushy" feel of a traditional "luxury" car. In my perception, a ten-hour drive in this car is like driving three hours in anything else. Then, since we were driving and passing through North Carolina anyway, Michelle made plans to stop on our way back and visit her friend Marsha who lives in a small town outside of Charlotte. And then, a few weeks before we left, Michelle, through the use of the internet, located an old friend from her operating room nursing days whom she hadn't seen in a dozen years or so. It turns out this lady, Gail, lives with her husband in the lovely little town of St. Marys Georgia, just at the Florida border and about five minutes from I-95. So, we had a place to stop on the way down.


Well, about a week or so before we left, I came down with a sort of 24-hour intestinal virus which produced the usual symptoms of those sorts of things and made me feel crappy (literally) for about a full day and not great for maybe one more day. What has this got to do with our trip? Well, apparently, despite diligent hand washing etc. I managed to pass the bug on to Michelle who was hit by it full force the night before we were to leave. We did have a day or so leeway such that we could have stayed home for a day for her to recover, but she decided to go for it and keep to schedule. So, there we were at Seven A.M. the next morning, loading the luggage and a somewhat out-of-it wife into the car and heading south. Normally, M. and I share the driving on a trip like this, but this first day, she was pretty much semi-comatose in the passenger seat so I drove the whole way to Florence North Carolina where we had a hotel reservation that first night. As I mentioned, her car is great on a road trip and since we managed to avoid the dreaded rush hour going around Washington D.C., the 11-hour drive was surprisingly easy.



Another pleasant surprise was the hotel in Florence, NC. It was called the Springhill Inn and Suites and it was terrific. The room was a two-room mini-suite with a microwave and refrigerator and it had one of the softest, most comfortable beds either of us had ever slept on. In fact, M. hit the sack shortly after we checked in and slept for about 12 hours which is exactly what she needed to pretty much recover from her malady. The next day, she felt 100% better and elected to drive the six hours or so to her friend Gail's at the other end of Georgia.



On the way to Gail's we had a couple of hours to kill since she would not be home until mid-afternoon, so we swung through Savannah GA. It's only a short hop from I-95 via a feeder interstate and we liked what we saw so much we decided to stop there overnight on the way back.



We arrived Gail's in St. Marys GA later that afternoon. Gail and her husband Hal were originally from New Jersey and when they retired a number of years ago, they first moved to Florida, but they grew dissatisfied and searched around until they found St Marys. They have a really beautiful home in a gated community. Their back porch looks out across a marshland and the St. Marys River to the Florida sandhills on the other side. Gail made us dinner and afterward we took a tour of the town and hit the local hangout for a beer. The main thing was that she and Michelle got to catch up with years of gossip, chat etc. from their days in the operating room together. The next day, we were up and off to Jody and Carole's in Delray Beach Florida.

Next: Delray and off on the Norwegian Jewel