Shared Illusions

We are home. Back in the Q. Arrived Wednesday night – 4 hours later than anticipated due to strong winds in Denver that caused the airport to shut down for both incoming and outgoing planes. Southwest Airlines takes care of business, though. Received 2 $100.00 vouchers for the delay. That was unexpected and very much appreciated.

After three glorious days on the beach we headed inland to visit friends and family. Traffic was atrocious and was compounded by the fact that our Challenger kept losing air in the tires, particularly one. So before hitting the highway we wanted to amend that situation. Finding stations with working air pumps ain’t easy! We drove for a half hour at least. Finally i made Ed pull into a car dealership. They have service bays and service bays have air.

That managed, we executed a route to Davenport where Adriana lives with her husband Steve and their two boys. We got to visit before meeting Ed’s niece Karen and her family at a restaurant in Orlando. I hadn’t seen Karen for 25 years! I had met her daughters about 12 years prior when they were in St. Louis with their grandparents. The two of them and i had a blast of a good time at the City Museum. They both remembered it with delight – and even wondered if they had dreamed it.

City Museum citymuseum.org City Museum is a museum whose exhibits consist largely of repurposed architectural and industrial objects, housed in the former International Shoe building in the Washington Avenue Loft District of St. Louis, Missouri, United States.

I highly recommend it. But be forewarned – it’s quite a physical experience. Lots of climbing and crawling. There’s a 10 story slide inside and you must take the stairway all the way to get to it. Which I did twice because the younger of the girls, about 5 or 6 at the time, decided that it was too scary. I couldn’t have her take herself down ten flights.

So, back in Davenport… Saturday morning was spent catching up – and playing with the boys, 2 and 6 years.

Then to Eva Park. But we missed it due to tire pressure issues again so we exchanged the car.

Our final stop on this trip was St. Augustine. We treated ourselves to a suite at the St. Francis Inn and b and b. It’s the oldest inn in the city. And we spent our first night of marriage at the St. Francis Inn in Santa Fe, so to celebrate 30 years it seemed apropos.

The city was lit up for the holidays!

The old town area is so much larger than Albuquerque’s. We enjoyed walking it and surrounding neighborhoods.

We toured Flagler College which originally had been the Ponce de Leon Hotel. Such a spectacularly beautiful building. Oak carving. Tiffany glass and chandeliers. A lobby with splendiferous artwork on the ceiling. No way to photograph much of it, but here are a few photos.

You can see the sky was overcast, as it was our entire time there. It was cool and breezy and i loved it. Such a difference between NE Florida and SW Florida and not such a long way between them.

One day we walked to the lighthouse and museum. It was about 6 miles RT. Walking over the bridge was lovely, but the rest of the walk was not. Still it was worthwhile. And i discovered my true calling – archeological diver! The museum is affiliated with the Smithsonian. A display highlighted divers reclaiming artifacts from the sea.

So, that’s it. Kind of a boring post. It’s good to be home. I’m cooking spicy shrimp for dinner!