Day 109, Year 11: Across the Bridge
Date: Monday, February 8, 2016
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Not as Windy, Still Cool with High 60’s, Low 50’s
Location: At Anchor in West Palm Beach City Anchorage, FL
You wouldn’t think just walking across the bridge to a different town would make such a difference, but it does. West Palm Beach is nice and feels normal. But when you walk across the bridge to Palm Beach, you can almost smell the money. It is obviously a very wealthy community. We are anchored between the city docks on the west side of the Intracoastal in West Palm Beach. At this point the Intracoastal is less than a half mile across and on the west side is Palm Beach. This morning we walked across the bridge to the Palm Beach side to go to the post office, bank, and drug store. After crossing the bridge we headed south along the water and immediately everything looks and feels just a little too perfect. The bike/walking path is fantastic, very wide with nice views across to West Palm Beach. When the path ended we were on upscale Worth Avenue. In 2013 it was voted one of the top three “Most Iconic” streets in America. We have driven down that street before, but never walked its length. You don’t realize that there are stores until you look closely. All of the buildings look similar and overhanging balconies and flowering vines disguise the real purpose of the buildings. The number of upscale clothing and jewelry stores is mind-blowing—all of the ones you have heard of and a whole lot of ones that you haven’t. I loved the one called Trillion. I’m sure you could spend that much buying a wardrobe in there. At the end of the avenue, we turned the corner to find a post office that was ‘normal’—except for the clientele. Both women in front of us were wearing obviously very expensive designer clothes, one with a mink cape and the other with a very fashionable, belted felt coat. I’ve stood in lots of lines in lots of post offices over the years, but have never followed women dressed like that! We walked back by way of Royal Palm Boulevard, lined on both sides with lovely royal palm trees. We stopped just before the bridge and to have a rest and snack on the lawn at The Society of the Four Arts and then headed back to ‘normal’ land in West Palm Beach. In total we walked four miles in the sunshine and it felt great. I’m sure we’ll retrace our steps many times while we are here as it makes a perfect walk with lots of ‘interesting’ sites.
Tonight we went back to shore and walked to the public library to hear local news columnist Frank Cerabino give his version of this week’s news. He was very good and very funny, but then he had a lot of great material with the political debates leading up to the Iowa caucus and tomorrow’s primary in New Hampshire. He supplements his talk with video clips and slides—informative and entertaining. We’ll certainly go to hear him every Monday night while we are here.
Tomorrow we are thinking of taking the bus to Mounts Botanical Garden, a little south and west of here, but still in West Palm Beach. They have a display of almost 500,000 Lego ‘bricks’ that have been made into quite sizable animals. The animals have been strategically placed throughout the gardens. Valentine’s Day is the last day of this exhibit, so if we don’t go tomorrow, we will certainly make it one day this week.
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| 160208 Day 109 Florida, USA–Views from Royal Park Bridge |
