The Festival of Trees

I kicked off the Christmas season this year at The Arc Tampa Bay’s annual Festival of Trees. The Festival of Trees is the largest fundraising event of the year for The Arc Tampa Bay, a not-for-profit organization that provides services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. All proceeds from the admission tickets and Christmas tree sales go directly to supporting the special needs community. This year the event grew to include over a hundred trees, from 2-feet to 7-feet tall, decorated by local businesses, artists and families.

Bites of Nassau – Experiencing the Bahamas through Food

Last week on our Carnival Liberty cruise, we took the Bites of Nassau Food Tasting and Cultural Walking Tour with Tru Bahamian Food Tours. This is a three-hour walking tour of downtown Nassau where we learned about Bahamian history and culture while sampling authentic local dishes along the way.

The Suite Life on Carnival Liberty

Port Canaveral

We booked this trip a few months ago, choosing a balcony cabin, but less than a week before the cruise we got a phone call from Carnival offering us an upgrade to an Ocean Suite. I was surprised because the cruise had been completely sold out. There must have been a cancellation. After about two minutes of careful and thoughtful consideration, we took the upgrade. When else would we have a chance to stay in a suite??

Top Five Don't-Miss Activities on a Carnival Cruise

Recently, there was a post on Cruise Critic’s Carnival Cruise Line forum asking people to name their top “don’t-miss” activities when cruising with Carnival. (Click here to read the post.) I compiled the results and came up with a list of the top five.

1. The Punchliner Comedy Club
While most cruise lines offer a comedy act or two, Carnival is unique for having an entire club devoted to comedy. There are multiple shows each night, some family friendly and some geared towards adults. Since the club is generally in one of the smaller lounges, you’ll want to arrive early. Seats fill up quickly.

The Keeper Tour at Big Cat Rescue

On Saturday, I went to Big Cat Rescue in Tampa for the Keeper Tour. Big Cat Rescue is a sanctuary for exotic cats who have been abused, orphaned, rescued from fur farms or simply abandoned because their owners didn’t understand the realities of owning a large cat as a “pet”. Each cat at BCR has a story. There is Nikita the lioness who was used as a guard in a drug house and was found chained in the basement. Hoover the tiger was the sole big cat survivor of an illegal zoo in Peru. Moses the bobcat was four weeks old and almost dead when someone dumped him in front of BCR’s gates. Kricket the serval was raised as a house cat until her owners divorced and decided they didn’t have time for her anymore. At Big Cat Rescue, these cats are given a chance to live out the rest of the lives in peace.

Labor Day Weekend in Jupiter

We got to Jupiter late on Saturday morning. Our room at the Jupiter Beach Resort wasn’t ready yet, but the front desk gave us wrist bands for the pool and beach amenities and wrote down our phone number to call us when we could check in. We took a quick tour of the hotel grounds and then headed off to lunch. We ate at Guanabanas, an open-air restaurant on one of the canals leading to the Loxahatchee River with tropical gardens, brightly painted Adirondack chairs and fresh food. We watched the paddleboarders paddling up and down the canal while we ate.

Six Florida Lighthouses That You Can Climb

Happy National Lighthouse Day! Florida is a great place to be if you love lighthouses as much as I do. At one time Florida had as many as 65 lighthouses. Twenty-nine are still standing today, and although not all are accessible to the public, here are six that are open all year round. Let's get climbing!

Sun and Fun on Norwegian Sun

Port Canaveral

We didn’t realize that this cruise left on Friday the 13th when we booked it. Not that it would have mattered - we just wanted to go somewhere the first weekend possible. :-)  But I was starting to wonder if we’d made a mistake when two days before the cruise, I came down with a cold and the night before the cruise our air conditioner stopped working. First thing Friday morning we frantically called up air conditioner companies and made arrangements for our friend Bob to meet the repairman that evening. Thank goodness for good friends! I was feeling pretty frazzled by the time we got on the road, but then Zac Brown Band’s “Castaway” came on the radio and I got into the island state of mind. “Pour me another one, make it a strong one, we’re gonna have some fun tonight. Just like the other one, make it a double rum, we’re gonna castaway tonight.” Bahamas, here we come!

Changes in Latitude

Saturday

Our early morning flight landed in Key West at 8:30 and we were at our hotel by 9. On our last three trips, we stayed at Chris’s house over by the cemetery, but a couple of weeks ago, we found out that the house was unexpectedly unavailable. So… a quick change of plans and we booked a room at the Southernmost Beach Resort at the south end of Duval Street. I was a little bummed about missing the convenience of the house but also excited to be staying in a different part of Key West and trying out new restaurants and bars.

Sandals South Coast - Part 3

Thursday

Finally, the winds had died down and water sports was up and running again. I thought I’d better get my wakeboarding in as early as possible, while I still could. It had been almost a year since the last time I went wakeboarding so I wasn’t sure I would be able to do it. But I got up on the first try and managed to stay up the whole way down the coast to the cove and back. Woohoo! I couldn’t wait to do it again the next day but then I remembered that the next day was our last day and we would be on a tour. Rats, the week was going by way too fast!

More Sandals South Coast Photos

Here are a few more pictures from around the resort.

Sandals South Coast - Part 2

Tuesday

Another day of relaxing by the main pool. When we got to the pool, the ski boat was running and people were out skiing or wakeboarding. But while I was trying to decide if I wanted to wakeboard, the wind suddenly picked up and water sports shut down again. Darn it! I don’t remember it being so windy on our last trip.

Since I wouldn’t be wakeboarding, Ron and I took another walk down the beach, stopping at Latitudes for a cold drink. Latitudes was built on a pier and encircled by hammocks that hung out over the water. Ron and I tried out the hammocks. They weren’t easy to get in and out of but we found if we scooted on our butts, it wasn’t TOO awkward.  We managed not to fall out, at any rate. :-)

Sandals South Coast - Part 1

Ron and I love Sandals and have been to seven different resorts. This trip was the first time we’ve stayed at a resort for a second time. We vacationed at Sandals South Coast in 2011, although back then it was called Sandals Whitehouse. The resort is made up of three “villages” (Italian, Dutch and French) plus a central piazza which includes the lobby, the main pool and most of the restaurants. The grounds are full of tropical flowers and wandering peacocks. Since our last visit, a section of over-water bungalows was added, as well as a new sushi restaurant and an over-water bar called Latitudes, the perfect spot to catch the sunset. With all the recent updates to the resort, we thought it would be a good time to go back and check out the changes.

The 2018 Sugar Sand Festival

In desperate need of some “me time” and with a couple more weeks to go before our vacation, I took the day off Friday to go to Clearwater Beach for the Pier 60 Sugar Sand Festival. The festival is a 10-day event where master sand sculptors from around the world showcase their creations. Clearwater Beach is known for its pure white, quartz sand, making it the perfect place for the festival.

The Anclote Key Lighthouse - 138 Steps to a View

Saturday was one of my favorite kinds of days. We went boating with friends AND I got to climb a lighthouse. The Anclote Key Lighthouse was built in 1887 and beautifully restored in 2003, but it has been closed for the last five years after soil contamination was found around the tower. With the help of a grant from the Florida Lighthouse Association and the hard work of the Friends of Anclote Key State Park and Lighthouse, a fence was installed along the walkway so that visitors can climb the lighthouse once again.

Star Wars and the Power of Costume

"I saw this Jedi costume, and I was so ecstatic I ran out of breath. At last I had an idea of who I was, how to carry myself, and I had a way of being."
Samuel L. Jackson (Mace Windu)

I was ten when Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope arrived in theaters. Of course, back then it was just called Star Wars. :-)  Since we were living in Korea at the time, I didn’t get to see the movie until we returned to the States for furlough in the summer of 1978. By then, our cousins had already watched it 12 times! Now forty years later, the Smithsonian Institution has brought Star Wars and the Power of Costume to the Museum of Fine Arts in St Petersburg. More than just a display of costumes and props, the exhibition explores the creative process of costume design. How did the directors and designers show the history and culture of a new universe through costumes? How did the costumes help the actors connect with their characters? How did the costumes visually portray the roles and natures of the characters – good or evil, princess, soldier, outlaw or politician? In Star Wars and the Power of Costume, these questions are answered using over 60 costumes from the first seven movies, as well as concept art and quotes from the designers and actors.

Three Days on Celebrity Equinox

Miami

The alarm clock went off at zero-dark-thirty and the cat looked at me like I was crazy for getting up so early. But Ron wanted to be on the road before the morning rush so we were already past Sarasota by the time the sun came up. Along Alligator Alley, the recent cold snap had turned the trees the colors of fall. The reds and oranges were pretty, but I was ready for spring! Enough of this cold weather! Unfortunately, another front was sweeping down from Canada so it looked like we were in for a chilly cruise.