Aruba, January 20, 2017

Friday, January 20, 2017

Aruba

What a pleasant, well-behaved group of passengers, a nice healthy slice of middle America. As to be expected there are a lot of people from Canada, Minnesota Wisconsin, anyplace where it's cold and snowy. It makes for a soothing cruise, but pretty dull for a blog. Where are the quirky, just a bit off plumb people that provide the fun stories? No low hanging fruit so I'm going to have to work for it on this trip. Still a week to go so there's still hope.

Since we were in Sandestin on the Florida Panhandle we decided to drive to the port this time. I guess you could do it in one long haul, but those days are long past. Instead, on Sunday we headed to St. Petersburg (about seven hours) on the west, Gulf coast mostly to visit the Dali Museum there. Remember all those jokes about St. Pete being God's waiting room? Much to our surprise, there were oodles of thirty-somethings with beautiful, well-behaved young children and "active" adults with beautiful, well-behaved dogs. We stayed in the revived downtown which is really along the bay with endless restaurants featuring outdoor dining for the above mentioned well-behaved humans and pets. It was about 70 degrees, low humidity--perfect for dinner outside. No wonder those North Easterners beat feet south in the winter.

Monday we planned to walk the fifteen minutes on the waterfront path to the Dali, just past the Tampa Bay Rowdies Stadium ("We Stand for Soccer") and the performing arts center. About 9 o' clock we could hear the rat-a-tat-tat of drums in the distance. What a surprise! It was the Gibbs High School band from south St. Pete warming up for the MLK Day parade which started in the park in front of our hotel. Lemme tell ya, those kids had a lot more style, soul and sass than the Newport Harbor High School band and drill team of the early 60s.

The parade was supposed to start at 11 but the streets were going to be closed until 3 so we figured we had plenty of time for the Museum before. The building is partly cement, partly geodesic glass. Inside is a dramatic cement spiral staircase leading up to the galleries on the second floor where the steps stop but the spiral continues up to the glass roof. Very surreal as you'd expect in a Dali Museum. The permanent gallery had a very comprehensive exhibit of Dali's work from his art school days of realistic, then impressionistic, then cubist style and on to surrealism and his huge mystical canvases. The temporary gallery featured Frieda Kahlo. A short, dramatic and painful life reflected in her work. On a brighter note one corner of the Museum's garden (called the Avant Garden--love that label) was planted to resemble Kahlo's bright, flower-filled garden in Mexico City. Score: my High Museum membership got us in for free so I felt beholden to spend that money in the gift shop. It was the right thing to do.

The parade was just beginning when we got back to it's main route on Central Avenue to Tropicana Stadium where the Tampa Bay Ray's play. It's just two lanes with parking on each side so Colorado Blvd it ain't, but this wasn't exactly the Rose Parade either. Instead it was a small town production with the county beauty queens, pint-sized baton twirlers, the local funeral home, bail bondsmen (clad in striped prison uniforms(!), handing out business cards. I'm all set if I ever misbehave there), the afore mentioned Gibbs High School band and all manner of political groups from Black Lives Matter to the Humane Society. It was great fun, even if it did seem to stop more than start. Everyone, participants and parade watchers alike were having a wonderful time. The Big Deal at the end was the fabulous Florida A & M Marching 100. Their music was great with even better style. It was definitely a fan favorite. And nothing says MLK Day like a band from one of the historically black colleges high steppin' down the street playing the theme from that old TV show, Good Times.

I was almost sorry to leave the next day to drive across the state on I-75, aka Alligator Alley, to Port Everglades and the waiting Coral Princess. Seamless parking and boarding (thank you, Paula, our wonderful, efficient cruise travel agent), lovely stateroom/suite with balcony, and picture perfect departure at sunset.

This morning we're docked in Aruba. Jim and I did a quick tour of the just-steps-away shopping district, mostly to stretch our legs after a couple of sea days. We're the only cruise ship in port this morning so it wasn't crowded, however, we landed at 7 am and not much was open!

Cartagena tomorrow and a trip to Columbia's largest aviary. We visited the charming old city and fort a few years ago so this time birds it is!

Oh, almost forgot, last night we went star-gazing. We made our way above Deck 15 to the tippy-top of the ship, got headsets so we could listen to the crew member, an amateur astronomer, point out the constellations and then, poof, all the lights up there were extinguished and the stars came out. What a treat. Another star-gazing is scheduled the night we leave Jamaica on our way home, a couple of hours later to see more that the night sky has to offer. Princess goes to no end of trouble and expense to provide entertainment, but last night the stars one-upped them all.