The view from Palm Beach part 1

Aside from bouts of homesickness for our northern home, my husband Bill and I have found respite for our aging bones, strength for our muscles and perfect tans in Palm Beach County Florida where we've been spending the winter. Among its many lovely parks, beaches, and other attractions, Bill and I discovered two more favorites just last week. We've already returned once even though it takes close to an hour to get there from Lake Worth. 

MacArthur State Park in North Palm Beach protects  a very rare and spectacularly beautiful piece of Florida’s southeast coast. It offers walking and kayak tours through various terrains: The Satinleaf Trail winds through a mixed maritime hammock. The Dune Hammock Trail runs through a forest of gumbo limbo,  cabbage palm, strangler fig and other tropical and subtropical forest species. Just last week, the Park opened a wonderful interpretive center that promises to keep expanding its offerings. You can rent a kayak and paddle the estuary into Lake Worth Lagoon. Manatees, snooks, rays, dolphins and a wide variety of other fish inhabit its waters and can often be seen while paddling or walking the 1,600 foot boardwalk over the estuary. A two-mile pristine beach with few sunbathers with whom to contend for space rewards the traveler who makes it to the end of the boardwalk. A free tram can help transport young children and beach equipment if you are so burdened. The beach also holds sea-glass galore and though shells are abundant, most are too small to warrant collecting unless making jewelry. Take a plastic bag along in case you find something wonderful to take home.

Only a few miles from MacArthur State Park is a place no child or adult should miss visiting. The Loggerhead Park and Marine Life Center is one of several facilities in the state dedicated to the preservation of endangered sea-turtles. A child-friendly interpretive center and turtle yard where injured or ailing hatchlings and injured juvenile to adult sea-turtles can be viewed are of special interest. Each tank posts information on the turtle being rehabilitated. Poseidon, one of the larger turtles currently being treated has lost two flippers with a third flipper severely compromised by fishing-line filament. Two others have severely cracked shells held together with special staples and still require feeding tubes to nourish them. Check out their website the Center's website (link above) which offers updates on each of the turtles being nursed back to health.

There's more I'd like to share with you, but I'll do so in separate posts. I don't know about you, but I much prefer short compact blogs to long complex posts

Hot Dog Rolls for breakfast and a day in Capri

As if she'd been awaiting the exact moment of our arrival on the patio for breakfast the next morning, Rita –Titty’s mother (of La Maison de Titty), hurried out with tiny éclairs with Nutella, coffee, and . . . of all things … hot dog rolls. These rolls tickled our funny bones. We’d hoped for the small hard rolls we’d slathered with butter and jelly in Rome but had gotten hot dog rolls. We did have prosciutto and cheese, however, and I found that these together with jelly (don’t cringe) on dried tostini (melba toasts) made a satisfactory breakfast.

Michele, Titty’s father, was waiting for us when we emerged with our cameras and carry bags from our room to drive us to the port in Sorrento. After showing us where to wait for the ferry to Capri, he disappeared, reappearing again suddenly with two bus tickets for our return trip to Piano di Sorrento that evening. Touched by this generosity, we found it easy to forgive La Maison de Titty the hot dog rolls for breakfast.

Determined to do Capri by bus, we waited for half an hour in the hot Capri sun before Bill, bless him, decided to hire one of the open-topped cabs waiting to ferry the more spend-thrift tourists around the island. I felt like a movie star with my sun glasses and straw hat as we cruised up and down Capri’s lush roads on Luigi’s tour. First stop was the Blue Grotto, where with Bill tucked between my legs, and a sweet Canadian woman tucked between Bill’s legs – her husband in front behind the oarsman, we ducked simultaneously as the small boat surged into the luminescent cave, our boatman’s tenor shimmering off the rocks and echoing throughout the chamber.

From the Blue Grotto, Luigi took us to Anacapri where we spent a wonderful hour wandering through San Michele, the roman villa that famed physician and author Axel Munch built with what remained of Emperor Tiberius’s old palace. Though crowded with tourists, the site elicited in me a great sense of inner quiet as I roamed about taking photos of the columned porticoes, exquisite gardens, and magnificent views. From there it was back to Capri via Marina Piccola, the exquisite bay with its amazing pinnacled rocks.

Back in Capri, having paid Luigi too much, we went in search of the Gardens of Augustus with views of the surrounding terrain and sea, and then – seeing from that vantage point what looked like a monastery – down to the Cloisters of San Giacomo, which were unfortunately closed by the time we reached them. From there we wandered through narrow alleys and side streets back down to Capri – a walk which could have been called a Tour of Capri Cats because kitties were everywhere: tucked under bushes and into the niches of walls, lying on columns and stairways, or leaping after flies.

My favorite memory of this trip, however, is not of the scenery or sites, but of Bill’s laughter as he watched the dynamics between a couple nearby.

“Give me some water, will you?” the wife demands of her husband, turning to chat with a group of tourists. Her husband gets a bottled water from the sack he’s carrying and holds it out to her. She keeps on chatting. He keeps on offering the bottle. For a good five minutes he stands there, lifting the bottle toward her, until he finally gives up, shrugs, and puts the water back in his bag. Charlie Chaplin could have made hay with this seedling.

At a loss in Naples

The center of the city and not the Docks at Naples was what we were looking for when we arrived in Naples late the night of October 10, my 69th birthday. The docks are a poorly lit jungle of dead ends and warehouses that we escaped only when a kindly policeman came to our rescue and told us how to get back onto the highway and what exit to take.

Described on its web page as "situated next to Piazza Garibaldi, in the heart of Naples, only 200 meters from the central railway station," the Hotel Garden on Corso Garibaldi. should have been easy to find but the area around the railway station was such a confusing tangle of dim and dirty streets that it took three phone calls to the Hotel receptionist before we found the modest little hotel situated within a block of buildings on one side of the Piazza.

Though "parking" was listed as a hotel amenity, we could find no hotel parking lot so we pulled into an empty place across the street. “Oh you must not park there,” we were told. Another employee drove with him to show him the way to the public parking lot located several blocks away.

When he returned he looked a bit pale. “Did you notice that the Kalos has a vicious scratch along the passenger side?” he asked. I hadn’t noticed it. It must have happened while we were checking in, I suggested. This scrape was to worry us for the entire trip as we were not sure what to do. “We’ll ask Giulio,” I suggested and so we put off reporting the scrape.

My birthday had so far been a combination of both highs and lows. Our room, sparely furnished and decorated in a 50s style was not exactly a “high” but it was clean, spacious, and had a bidet (we were to become very fond of these wonderful cleansing devices throughout our trip and found them in every home or hotel we visited). Things were beginning to look up. When the receptionist told us that despite the late hour we’d find restaurants open, our situation brightened substantially.

Starving (it was by now after 9:30 p.m.) we went in search of dinner. I was about to walk over what I thought was a dirty piece of cardboard when I saw a foot sticking out from under it. “Bill, there’s a person there,” I whispered, grabbing his arm. There were other pieces of cardboard similarly inhabited in the lot where we’d first parked. Who were these poor unfortunates I wondered, and in what kind of a neighborhood was the Hotel Garden located?

When we found the Ristorante de Mimi on the street directly behind the hotel my impression of the neighborhood went up several notches. So did seeing a bright red Ferrari parked nearby.

Our meal was the high of our trip to Naples. While we sipped wine and savored a delicious dinner, a Romeo seated near us in a red sweater-vest nibbled on the hands and arms of the blond with him, interrupting his meal only to kiss her passionately; while next to us the owner of the restaurant fawned over a table of big sated-looking men. The supposition that only corrupt politicians and/or Mafiosi would be accorded such ongoing constant attention (we did not see any money offered in exchange for the food and service) brought a sense of intrigue to the end of our day despite the realization that this section of Naples was not what we'd have chosen had we known better.

Morning at the Boyce Thompson Arboretum in Phoenix

On a bright March 15 morning, we traveled east from Phoenix on Highway 60 to visit the Boyce Thompson Arboretum where desert plants from around the world are featured in landscapes reflecting other desert environments –

Africa, Australia, South America, the Canary Islands, and the Chihuahuan desert of Mexico, west Texas, and southern New Mexico. My husband Bill and I got so carried away that we took well over 100 photos. Don't run, I'm only posting a couple here!

My favorite landscape and hike was the High Trail through the Upper Sonoran Natural Area.

The rocks looked like they’d been poured in blobs from some heavenly sand bucket.

We saw no rattlesnakes but we didn’t go looking for them. Besides, from what I understand rattlesnakes don’t show themselves until it gets a bit warmer.



The photo to the left is of a Blue Elf Aloe (pretty big for an elf wouldn't you say?)

And, check out the bark on the Mount Atlas Mastic Tree to the right. Beautiful even if it resembles anf elephants hide.


Several hours of browsing through the Arboretum aroused in us a “powerful thirst.” so we traveled to the historic mining town of Superior AZ – not quite a ghost town but almost -- with the only affluence reflected in the Church of the Latter Day Saints.

The town center was restaurant free, so we headed back to the highway and stopped at Buckboard City Café, which also boasts the world’s smallest museum.

The café’s charm lay not so much in its food which was hearty and good, but in its ranch town frontage, rustic interior,
and the amazing sculptures built from discarded household, farming, and mining paraphernalia.

The lovely piece to the right is called Hard Labor Falls, though I was hard pressed to find any falls trickling from those wheelbarrows.

Satiated, we were ready for our next journey, this one to Saguaro and Canyon Lakes, the subjects of my next post.

© Beryl Singleton Bissell 2008

The Minneapolis Star Tribune named Beryl as a "Best of 2006 Minnesota Authors." Her book The Scent of God was a “Notable” Book Sense selection for April 2006. She is a columnist for the Cook County News Herald and has been published in anthologies and periodicals nationwide. See Road Writer for her travel blog.