Vacation, Day 2

Ah, what a day.

There will be no pictures of beautiful beaches today - this, for many reasons. Tropical Storm Fay has camped out north of us off the coast of Florida, just far enough away to keep us dry, but just close enough to keep things dark, windy, and unsettled.

Perhaps because of this, or maybe just in spite of it, my mother decided today would be a good day to run errands. Errand day is a fairly normal occurrence any time I visit Florida, so we took it in stride. We began at this monstrosity, a mall so pristine and beautifully manicured I was actually afraid to take pictures of it for fear of disturbing the exceptionally well dressed mallgoers. Never in my life - and unfortunately, I have been to a lot of malls - have I seen a mall festooned with fresh roses and lavender plants. A bit much for me.

After some fruitless browsing, we continued on to Costco and to this Whole Foods (I take this picture for a certain cross-country traveler, you know who you are!):

It was your fairly typical Whole Foods experience, although seeing a customer use Coach bags (real ones, I swear! But again, too scared to take that particular photograph) as her reusable grocery totes was a bit odd.

The real adventure of the day came courtesy of our rental car. I noticed when we picked it up yesterday that it made an ominous creak every time I hit the gas, and by this afternoon, we decided it was too risky to keep driving around feeling like the car might break in two. So it was back to the airport for us, and in what turned out to be a painless experience, we switched our creaky, smoky-smelling junker for a new car with literally one mile clocked on the odometer. And, they gave us a free tank of gas and a 40 dollar credit! Not bad for a day's work.

On the way back, I took CP on a brief tour of the greater West Palm area; tomorrow we hit Palm Beach proper, which should result in more exciting pictures. In the meantime, you can have these.

Clematis Street, West Palm Beach - considered the historic area of West Palm, which for us, coming out of New England, seems like a relative term:



Public art on Clematis Street:

The south Florida Tri-Rail commuter rail. Why a picture of a train? CP likes trains (I admit, I find them a bit novel, too).

Sunset driving west on Okeechobee Boulevard (just had to get that name in there. Love the strange street names in Florida):

And with that, a good night. We'll see you tomorrow with more news and pictures of our adventures. What's on tap? Ogling the homes and the people on Palm Beach; a visit to a state park in search of sea turtles and pristine beaches; and probably some shopping. Seems like when you're in Florida, that's just what you do. More on this soon.