Road Trip To Ybor City

Sunday, we headed to Tampa to have dinner with Cape Cod friends who were there for a week. We had planned to meet them around 5:00, so we got into town early to go to Ybor (pronounced EEBOR) City.

Ybor City is the Latin Quarter of Tampa.

In 1886, Ybor City was established as the center of cigar production in the United States.

There is a small State park with a museum...

...which was once an Italian Bakery...

...a small courtyard where people can sit at tables and play dominoes.

You can rent the courtyard for small weddings.
One of the casitas was open to the public.

Surprisingly, it was a comfortable, 2 bedroom house that was affordable enough, at $400, to be bought by a worker with small deductions from his paycheck.

The art on the cigar boxes is really beautiful.

We walked 2 blocks over to the entertainment district of town.

We ended the night with a great dinner in Clearwater and a beautiful sunset on Clearwater Beach.

Last Of The Savannah Photos

Fifth in a series of What I Did On My Summer Vacation...I promise!

Last time I showed you Mr Sunshine's Savannah photos. These are mine.

He likes to photograph interesting houses and buildings. He gets the big picture. I like to step in close and focus on one thing. I also like to shoot in black and white.

River Street

River Street

Aboard The Danmark

Fancy Downspout

A lot of the buildings in the Historic District of Savannah have beautiful ironwork details. You can read about it here.



History Nerd Goes To Savannah

Third in a series of "What We Did On Our Summer Vacation"

We spent 3 and 1/2 days in Savannah. If we visit a city that has some history and a Trolley tour, we go on the tour and decide what areas of town we want to further explore.

I'll say that I have mixed feelings about the city. If you are a clean freak you would be a little uncomfortable. It's a gritty city for sure,many areas with dirty pavement, trash,the smell of horse poop wherever the carriages stop, a lot of unemployed hanging around a couple of the squares and we didn't feel particularly safe walking around after dark.

What I did love is that it is a funky city with a lot of character. It's crawling with art students from SCAD and the college is responsible for a large amount of the historic preservation and refurbishing of the old buildings. Nearly every building has a story, especially along the waterfront there are old cotton factories turned into shops and restaurants and there are streets full of interesting architecture (my next post is photos we took on a walk of the neighborhoods).

HUGE cargo ships pass by the waterfront every day. While we were there the Danish training ship DANMARK was in port. We toured the ship and talked to the young people who were spending a semester at sea. It was a "sea" of beautiful blonde-blue-eyed, friendly students who told us all about their days and nights on the ship and where they had travelled.

We have a little sailing experience from living on Cape Cod and it was Mr Sunshine who noticed that there are no mechanical aids on this ship to help raise the sails. The students have to pull the lines by hand and climb up the mast to furl and unfurl the sails. Some of the students admitted to being a little afraid of heights!

 Our hotel was near City Market and Ellis Square (there are currently 22 squares in Savannah). There is this statue of Johnny Mercer that we passed at least once a day. Did you know he wrote the lyrics to 1500 songs and won 4 Academy Awards? I found myself humming some of my favorites every time I passed...Moon River,You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby, Days Of Wine And Roses. Jeepers Creepers (where'd ya get those peepers) and Come Rain Or Come Shine.

 I wanted to see the inside of the Cathedral Of St John The Baptist. Before the American Revolution it was forbidden to be Catholic in Georgia. It was thought that Catholics would be more loyal to the Spanish instead of the British.  Shortly after the war was over this church was built by immigrants from France and Haiti.

 I immediately thought that the church reminded me of the one I went to as a child in MA. It was also founded by French Catholic immigrants to the US.

 We found St Patrick in one of the stained glass windows.

 The bottom of the baptismal font is beautiful.

The city is home to Savannah College of Art And Design, founded in 1978. The students appear to travel about the neighborhoods in large groups. I loved the outfits, makeup, HUGE portfolios cases they were carrying and they seemed to be a happy bunch. Unfortunately I couldn't afford anything in the student/alumni store!

 Poor Florence. Her beloved left to go to sea and asked her to wait for him. She spent the next 40 years greeting every ship that came up the river. He never returned and the story goes that she died of a broken heart.

Sorry, Mr Sunshine. I think I might have moved on with my life.

Discovery Lift-Off. Awesome Day!

Yesterday we drove an hour out to Titusville to watch the Space Shuttle lift off. At any time during the countdown, the lift-off can be scrubbed for clouds, lightning, computer issues, etc. At one point yesterday, they halted the countdown for an Eastern Range computer issue, that was eventually resolved.

We packed beach chairs, sandwiches, a crossword puzzle book, cameras, binoculars and gave ourselves about 5 hours to find a place to watch. We ended up at Veteran's Memorial park on the Indian River Lagoon.

 Those little dots on the causeway are about 1,000 people. Some stood there for over 3 hours.

 We sat at the park for about 3 hours with a crowd of about 2,000. We were surrounded by some really nice people. One man we talked to for a really long time was retired Air Force. He was listening to the NASA feed in his earphones and keeping us updated on what was happening. People chatted about where they were from and previous launches.

 You hear the noise before you see the Shuttle. This pic was about 10 seconds after lift-off. The crowd cheers and claps!

 This is about a minute after take-off.

 This was just about the point where the rocket boosters separate from the shuttle and drop into the ocean. I could barely see it with my eyes or my zoom lens, but the Air Force gentleman handed me his super-duper binoculars and told me to watch it up close!

 The trail stays for a long time.

It was a gorgeous day...sunny and about 80 degrees. I got sunburned shoulders.

This was the third time I went out to watch a shuttle, but the other 2 times the lift-off was scrubbed. This was the last launch of Discovery. Endeavour is scheduled for April 19th. Gabrielle Gifford's husband, Mark Kelly, will be on that launch.

Days like these are what makes me LOVE living in Florida.

This is the link for the You Tube video shot by Mr Sunshine and his fabulous FLIP camera.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mLIOarU3MQ&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

Photo: 1/20/09

This bumper sticker on my car was a gift from www.MoveOn.org

Photos-Arlington-Remembering

My grandfathers were both disabled at a young age and were never in the military. My father was in the Massachusetts Army National Guard. He was on active duty during the Berlin Crisis in 1961. He was stationed at Fort Bragg NC for a year, while Mom was at home in MA with 3 babies under 4 years old. My husband and brothers were too young to go to VietNam.

The day my son turned 21 and had to register was an unhappy day for me. I feared a draft to round up more troops to send to Iraq. A few of his fellow grads from the class of 2003 have gone and all have returned home safely.

I visited Arlington National Cemetary in April. You can feel how sacred this place is, as soon as you enter the Visitor Center and look at the pictures on the walls.

I never knew how big Arlington was or how many are buried there.

I was amazed at the number of graves from the Civil War. I had thought most soldiers had been buried at the battlefields where they died.

I was in Grade 1 when JFK was assassinated and the nuns cried and sent us home. We sat in front of the small black/white TV for days.

I was in Grade 5 when Bobby was killed. We heard it from someone at the bus stop. I don't remember my teacher mentioning it. We watched the black/white TV again as the train made it's way back to Washington.

At the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Mom and I whispered to each other how the young Army soldiers in the Honor Guard reminded us of Dad. He was tall and thin and looked mighty dignified (and VERY handsome) in his dress uniform. He had often served in an Honor Guard capacity while in the National Guard.

Sometimes I feel as though Dad is standing beside me. A rainy day in April at Arlington was one of those days.

Across the street from the amphitheater at the Tomb is a group of 3 memorial stones. The left one is for the Challenger Astronauts and the right one is for the Columbia Astronauts. The one in the center is for the 8 American servicemen who died in an unsuccessful attempt to rescue the hostages held at the US Embassy in Iran in April of 1980. They were all under 35 years old and 2 were only 21.