Three Nights of Lights

St Augustine’s Nights of Lights is a holiday festival that runs from November to January when the entire historic district is decorated in millions of white lights, meant to represent the Spanish tradition of placing a welcoming candle in the window. I love Christmas lights and have been wanting to see the Nights of Lights for years. This year we finally got to go!  We asked our friends Ronnie and Jamie to join us since we hadn’t been on a trip together in ages.

Three Days in Portland

Wednesday

I was even more excited about this trip than I usually am before vacation. For one thing, I’d waited for it for so long. We’d planned to visit Portland 11 years ago to see the lighthouses, but we’d had to cancel. This year I decided it was time to reschedule! I hadn’t added any lighthouses to my list in a while. The other reason I was excited was because Maine was so different from our usual Caribbean vacation destinations. I was ready to see new scenery, eat new food, and enjoy some cooler weather. But as our plane landed at Portland International Jetport, the captain announced that it was sunny and 87 degrees. So much for cooler weather! :-)

Isla Mujeres

Isla Mujeres means “Island of Women”. It was given the name by Francisco Hernandez Cordova, who discovered the island in 1517 and found many carved statues of women made by the Mayans to honor Ixchel, the goddess of childbirth and medicine. Although the island is only twelve miles from Cancun's Hotel Zone, it has a more laid-back, local vibe. We’d been to Isla Mujeres once before, on our first trip to Cancun in 2012. Since we were with a tour group, we didn’t have as much time to explore as we would have liked. This time, we thought we’d take the Ultramar ferry to the island so that we could set our own schedule and see some of the things we’d missed.

Fire and Ice - Iceland Lighthouses Part 2

Another Iceland post by guest writer and sister, Mary Wagner. You can read Mary's first post here.

This is definitely NOT the usual fare for this blog: Iceland in December and January! But there are still good reasons to visit. If you love Christmas, it's about as Christmassy as it gets, with lights, decorations, festivities, stories, masses in their historic Churches. One Icelandic custom is to give books for Christmas Eve gifts, then on Christmas Day everyone stays home in their pajamas, drinks cocoa, and reads. So perhaps the actual week of Christmas isn't the best time to visit, but the weeks prior and after can be pretty amazing.

This trip we took in two lighthouses, Akranesviti and Grottaviti. We arrived at Akranes at sunrise of our first morning, which by the way was 11:11 AM, and watched the clouds changing color over the bay and Reykjavik in the distance. The Akranes lighthouse is open for climbing, and has the only non-spiral staircase I've ever seen in a lighthouse. There are actually two lighthouses on that landspit. The smaller structure is the original lighthouse, built in 1918. As you walk from the visitor center to the lighthouses, you pass the racks for drying fish, as Akranes is an old fishing village, and in the air you will catch a faint whiff of smoking fish.

Iceland Lighthouses

In a departure from my usual Caribbean-themed posts, here is a review from my first guest writer, my sister Mary, about her recent adventures in Iceland.

Iceland has approximately 104 lighthouses along its 3000-mile coastline, mostly small ones, but for those with a passion for architecture, history, and fantastical panoramas, they are definitely worth a visit! The Icelandic word for a lighthouse is “viti,” which means “to know,” as in “to know” where one is sailing. And similarly, the purpose of reading a travel blog is “to know” more about, well, wherever one has been or will be travelling.

Most of the lighthouses are scattered along the northern coasts and fjords, but my south coast and Reykjavik/Reykjanes visit included a number of particularly interesting viti, of which I visited two.

Our Return to Cruising on Serenade of the Seas

Tampa

Our last cruise was in February 2020. And then COVID… I didn’t realize how much I would miss cruising. I missed getting on a ship and not worrying about anything for the next few days. I missed sitting on the balcony watching the waves. I missed the casinos, escargot at dinner and towel animals. I missed the color of the deep, blue water. I knew that with the COVID protocols, this cruise would be a bit different than cruises in the “before” days, but I was ready to give it a shot!

We got to the port at our 12:30 check-in time. Even with assigned check-in times and the ship at half capacity, it took a while to get through the line because the staff had to review everyone’s vaccination cards and COVID test results. But we were having lunch at one of the outdoor tables at the back of the Windjammer by 1:30. I remember loving those tables when we sailed on Jewel of the Seas, Serenade’s sister ship. Between the outdoor seating, the helipad, and the glass elevators facing the sea, there were plenty of ocean views.

Weekend at the Space Coast

We got to Cape Canaveral at around 12:30, too early to check into our hotel so we went to the port for lunch at Grills Tiki Bar. We ate outside and watched dolphins swimming up and down the channel and even spotted a couple of sea turtles. What we didn’t see were cruise ships, which was so strange! After lunch we checked out the Exploration Tower, a welcome center with an observation deck on the seventh floor. Despite the cloudy skies, the views from the observation deck were great. In the distance, we found some of the missing cruise ships – two Disney ships anchored offshore. Hopefully they will be sailing again soon!

Baltimore's Inner Harbor

We recently traveled to Baltimore for my niece's wedding and had a few hours to walk around the Inner Harbor before leaving for the airport. I didn’t know much about the area, but just before the trip I learned that the Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse was located there. One thing I love about lighthouses is that they are almost always surrounded by beauty and history. Find a lighthouse and you’ll find so much more. If I’d realized how much there was to explore around the Inner Harbor, I would have arranged to stay in Baltimore for another day. Three hours wasn’t nearly enough time!

MSC Divina - Long-time Cruisers Try a New Cruise Line

Miami

Ron and I found this 3-day cruise on MSC Divina while we were looking for a quick getaway for the Presidents Day holiday. Owned by an Italian family, MSC Cruises has only been in the US market for a few years. We’d never sailed with MSC before, and I was interested in seeing how it compared with other cruise lines like Royal Caribbean and Carnival. If nothing else, it would be fun to try something different, and Divina looked beautiful. I liked the itinerary too – a full day in Freeport and another at MSC’s new private island, Ocean Cay, which just opened on December 5th.

National Lighthouse Day 2019

Lighthouses are endlessly suggestive signifiers of both human isolation and our ultimate connectedness to each other.
-Virginia Woolf

St Marks Lighthouse, St Marks Florida

Savannah and Tybee Island

Thursday, July Fourth

Savannah first appeared on my radar when I was researching lighthouses and saw that it was near the Tybee Island Lighthouse. One thing I’ve learned about lighthouses is that they are almost always surrounded by interesting and beautiful places. My knowledge of Savannah was limited to vague impressions of moss-draped trees and good Southern food, but that was enough for me! It just took a few years to convince Ron to make the road trip.

Cruising to Bermuda - Part 2

Bermuda Again

Before the trip I’d looked at the cruise line’s shore excursions and wasn’t impressed with any of them. What I really wanted for our first trip to Bermuda was something like the Thenford Gray tour we’d taken in St Kitts in February - a tour with an excellent guide who could give us an overview of the island, lots of history and beautiful scenery, and no large groups. Then on Cruise Critic, I learned that Bermuda has “Blue Flag” taxi drivers who are certified to provide private tours. The tours cost $50 an hour for up to 4 people and you can customize them according to your time frame and interests. Perfect! After reading several glowing reviews for Quinton Bean, I contacted him by email to make the arrangements.

Celebrating Florida Lighthouse Day on Gasparilla Island

On Saturday, Ron and I drove down to Gasparilla Island to climb two lighthouses - the Port Boca Grande and Gasparilla Island Lights. In honor of Florida Lighthouse Day, the Barrier Island Parks Society was hosting a special event with both lighthouses open to the public.

Since we weren’t sure how long the drive would take, we left home early and had plenty of time to explore the island before our first lighthouse climb at 11:20. Gasparilla Island is filled with Old Florida history. We stopped to take pictures of the Gasparilla Inn built in 1911, the original train depot (which now houses shops and a restaurant) and Banyan Street, a street lined with hundred-year-old banyan trees. Golf carts seemed to be the most popular mode of transportation around the island. I wished we’d thought about renting one for the day. They looked fun.

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!

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.

Daytona Beach Labor Day Weekend

We hadn’t planned to go out of town for Labor Day. The weekend cruises were either booked up or too expensive, and we didn’t want to spend a lot of money. But at the last minute, we decided we needed to go somewhere. Orlando? Apalachicola? Daytona Beach? Yes, Daytona! We hadn’t been there in AGES.

We left Saturday morning and got to Daytona at 10:30, just in time for the 11 o’clock All Access Tour at the Daytona International Speedway. Ron had been to the speedway several times for car shows but I’d never seen it and I thought it would be interesting to see what it was like behind the scenes.

The tour lasted about an hour and a half and we got to see many areas of the property, riding from place to place in trams towed by our tour guide in a truck. Our first stop was on an access road overlooking the incredible 31-degree angle of the track at Turn 4 (31 degrees because at 32 degrees, the dirt starts to slide down). Then we drove onto the track itself. As we entered the raceway, I could almost feel the adrenaline and excitement of the drivers. We stopped at the checkered Start/Finish line where we all attempted to walk up the 18-degree track. It was a lot steeper than it looked! Next we had souvenir pictures taken at Victory Lane and visited the Drivers Meeting Room, where the teams meet for safety briefings and instructions before each race. Our final stop was inside the stadium itself, which is undergoing a $400-million renovation called Daytona Rising. When the project is finished, the stadium will have 101,500 new, wider seats, 14 escalators, and most importantly, twice as many women’s bathrooms. :-)

Daytona International Speedway

Cruising into the New Year

Tampa

In December our company unexpectedly decided to close on New Year’s Eve for the rest of the week. We suddenly had five days off in a row and weren’t about to let them go to waste! We started looking into short cruises and found a 4-day sailing on the Carnival Paradise that left out of Tampa on New Year’s Day. It sounded like the perfect way to start the New Year.

We got to the port at noon and were on board within minutes. This was our second trip on Paradise so we were already familiar with the ship, but this time it was decorated for Christmas with swags of garland and bows all around the atrium railings and a large Christmas tree next to the lobby bar. The greens and reds looked pretty with the colored glass and giant turquoise “eggs”. Bar waiters were handing out complimentary glasses of champagne. It was very festive.

Paradise Atrium

Happy National Lighthouse Day

A fallen lighthouse is more dangerous than a reef.
- unknown

Thank you to all the people who keep our lighthouses standing!

Biloxi Lighthouse, Biloxi Mississippi

Lighthousing

I finally updated my lighthouse website. It's been a couple of years since I've had any lighthouses to add, and this year I've added four! I think I need to start planning my next one. Maybe Tybee Island?

Check out the new additions here.

Bodie Island Lighthouse, North Carolina