First Day in Coconut Grove

After the exhausting day we had yesterday, Sunday was very quiet and relaxed. We did take the water taxi in about 1:30 just to stretch our legs. The driver was nice enough to take our bikes also.

This is the water taxi that runs every hour from 8-5. Takes us from our mooring into the marina.

The Coconut Grove Art Festival was in town this week-end. It's one of the biggest outdoor art shows in the country and features artist from all over the world. Probably would have been interesting but the weather was hot and the crowd was huge so we decided to skip it. Since it was right on the waterfront finding a way to get around it was a challenge. We finally succeeded in getting to a bike path through a lovely neighborhood. Massive houses and beautiful landscaping. The picture below is an alcove on the street side of a wall . There was no identification but we thought it was interesting.

The next 3 pictures were taken along the same wall showing the beautiful flowers in bloom (yes, they're real and yes, it's February).

On our way back to the marina we stopped at a mobile lemonade stand that's been doing business at the same place since 1978.

They also served hot dogs and Phil just couldn't resist. Hope his cardiologist doesn't see this picture.

Right across the street from this was a beautiful gated house. Notice the tall stately palms on each side and the unusual gate.

After cooling off with a frosted lemonade we headed back to the marina for a shower. You'd think in a place as swanky as Coconut Grove the facilities would at least be a little better than average. Wrong! The shower stalls were air conditioned but the water was wacky...it ran hot then cold never just right. The shower curtain looked like it came out of the dollar store and was not clean. There was no place to hang your stuff and nowhere to put anything except on the back of the toilet that didn't have a lid. But it was a shower and that's important. Maybe these are just the facilities for boaters on the mooring balls, not for those in a much more expensive slip.

The taxi brought us back to the boat about 4:30, then we had an early dinner. There was a nice cool breeze blowing through the open hatches so we had a/c without power all night long.