Summary of Florida

David Smith, Dorothy, and Larry Smith

Our first stop in Florida has ended.  We have many happy memories.

While at my brother David’s we visited Universal Studios, Walt Disney’s Epcot Center, Walt Disney’s Animal Kingdom where I got a taste of Safari.  We got to spend time with my other brother Larry and his wife Carol who flew down from Ohio and Kentucky.  That first week was very busy.  Did I mention that David took bridge lessons at the Central Florida Regional bridge tournament and played in the 0-20 game?  Did I mention that we both had a lesson on Law of Total Tricks from the bridge master, Larry

Cohen?

The next week we moved to Susan Smith’s home where she lives with her significant other, Jim Albers in the Waterford Lakes area of Orlando which is all built up with shopping, wide roads and traffic due to its proximity to University of Central Florida’s main campus area.  This is the second largest University in the whole United States, so you can imagine a whole city of students, like maybe 30,000!  Jim lives on a lake with only a few homes with docks.  He basically has his own private lake for jet skiing, swimming, canoeing, paddle boarding, and there is even a party boat.  Lots of fun for family, grandchildren and adult parties and thankfully a separate apartment for homeless ex  inlaw relatives from Hawaii.

David quickly made friends at the local Starbucks including the area policemen who are there with their laptops in the mornings.  A Fedex store next door for making copies, a cleaners nearby where the owner is from Gujarat, India so David could practice his Gujarati.

We have had our clothes and suitcases spread out all over the two bedrooms and living room deciding what to pack.  Thankfully Florida has been cool.  The places we are visiting will also be cool in the mornings and evenings, so we are more in tune with how to pack.  So of course we did a lot of shopping.  I especially needed warmer clothes.  Jams World wasn't going to work.

Outside the Jupiter lighthouse

During our trip to Jupiter, FL where we visited Susan’s Mother, Phyllis Shafer, we shopped at Chico’s and Nordstrom at the Palm Beach mall.  David got $750 dress shoes for less than half the price.  Now he has more expensive shoes that I can step on while dancing on a cruise ship dance floor.

Down the stairs at Jupiter Lighthouse

In Jupiter we enjoyed visiting the local lighthouse  and climbed the 115 stairs!

We ate at some awesome restaurants and played bridge with Phyllis.  We also got to put our feet in the Atlantic Ocean to document our official world trip with important landmarks.

At the Atlantic Ocean

Add caption

We were able to spend some time with my nephew Rob Smith and his wife, Denise, and their three delightful children, Elliott, 5, Hayley who turned 3, and Emerson who is about 6 months.  We babysat with Grandpa, then went out to dinner together.  We had a birthday party where Susan gave Hayley a princess bike and had dinner at Olive Garden.  The official birthday party was at a park.  This past Sunday we had them over to Susan’s for brunch and fun on the lawn.  They invited us to see the manatees at Blue Spring State Park but we had other plans.

We visited my soon to be 90 year old Aunt Elaine, my mother’s younger sister.  We got to stay at Village on the Green in a guest room and participate in all of her fun activities and meet many of her friends, some of whom still remembered my Mother, Barbara Patry.  First we played duplicate bridge Friday with Herb whom we met at the Larry Cohen class.  We came in first place!  Then we played gin rummy Saturday morning.  Our team won.  Then we got to use our winnings to buy bingo cards Sunday night.  David won one of the Bingos.  We also went to a concert by Suzanne and Jim who play Civil War music.  Oh! Susanna is one of the popular songs that came from that era.  Sunday there was an interesting talk about bats.  We learned that bats are the largest group of mammals.  Most of them are super tiny.

Putting green at VOTG in honor of my Mother

We saw several movies:  Wild, the story of Cheryl Strayed, played by Reese Witherspoon, hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.  I had just finished the book so it was interesting to see.  The movie followed the book pretty well.

The Theory of Everything, about Steven Hawking.  Eddie Redmayne, who portrayed him was excellent and will probably win the academy award for his performance.

Night at the Museum, 2.  They went to the British museum this time. We enjoyed the first one, and this one was also a lot of fun.

Paddington, the popular children’s book about a bear who was adopted by an English family.  Cute.

MetOpera live in HD performances of Merry Widow by Lahar, and Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman. 

We also saw a local Winter Park Playhouse production of Rat Pack The actors really looked like and sounded like the real thing, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra and played their characters to a T.

Atlantis

David Smith and David and I visited the Kennedy Space Center  last week.  At half the price of a Disney Park, it was much more interesting to us and more fun, maybe because we were adults; but there were plenty of kids there as well.  We went midweek and the weather was nippy so we had no lines or crowds.  The bus trip to see all the launch platforms was a big feature.  We also saw the real shuttle Atlantis.  It is huge!  It has its own building and video introduction.  The two IMAX movies, one on the Space Station, and one on the Hubble telescope were very interesting.  Of course there was the rocket “garden”.  We got home in plenty of time to go out to dinner with David and Marlene and Megan.

Susan, Elliott, Emerson and Hayley

It is sad to be leaving Florida after renewing friendships with my relatives and the wonderful hospitality of David and Marlene, Aunt Elaine, Phyllis Shafer and Susan Smith and Jim Albers.  We also got to spend time with my brother Larry and Carol, and Rob and Denise Smith and Elliott, Hayley and Emerson.  As we all know, the time spent with family and friends are the best memories.

David, Rob and Jim comparing Solar output

Next in line for memories would be the splendid evening sunsets over the vast expanse of sky (there are no mountains), the thrill of the Atlantic Ocean, and the peaceful canoe rides around Jim’s private lake.

Florida sunset