The View from Palm Beach Part 2

I promised more short favorite sites to visit in Palm Beach, so here they are. Part 2

Morikami Japanese Gardens in Del Ray Beach, provides an aura of beauty and quiet in Florida’s otherwise hectic environment. Perhaps it’s the influence of all the New Yorkers that now make the county home, but I’ve never heard such loud voices and dreadful drivers as I’ve encountered down here. But in Morikami Gardens, even the children move slowly down pathways leading from one century-style gardens to the next. Small lakes, waterfalls, trees groomed into bonsai shapes, colorful turtles and Koi passing under arched bridges soothe even the most garrulous of visitors. We also met several iguanas in the pond next to the tea house. A young fellow and a really spikey granddaddy.

Green Cay in Boynton Beach and Wakodahatchee  in Del Ray Beach are water thrill me each time I visit. Both are part of the Palm Beach water reclamation wetlands that offer that allow the visitor close access to hundreds of nesting egrets, herons, anhingas,  cormorants, gallinules and myriad wetland creatures and plants. Make sure to bring your camera as the avian wonders you will see there will amaze you.

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

Finding wild and out-of-season blueberries on the trail

Blueberries. Wild, ripe, luscious, copious, untouched. Not the tiny wild blueberries we have in Minnesota, but big blueberries. The size of deluxe cultivated blueberries. We blundered into them while on a grueling hike along the Casque Isle Trail near Rossport Ontario on Lake Superior. The season was already well over in Minnesota but this was blueberry paradise and we’d beaten the bears to it.  We gorged on them until, unable to stuff another berry into our mouths, we slogged on. Our yearning to filch great amounts of the berries dissolved as we tackled the next section of trail. We needed both hands to haul ourselves up the inclines we encountered.

One of our favorite places on the Circle Drive is Rossport, a tiny fishermen’s village at the northernmost section of Lake Superior. We discovered Rossport years ago while making the first of four Circle tours around Lake Superior. There’s not a lot to do in Rossport if you want a commercial holiday. Bill and I have gone every September to celebrate his birthday. Besides catching up on reading, we love hiking the Casque Isle Trail. This September we hiked a new section, and as has happened several times in the past, we lost the trail. We’d hauled ourselves to the top of a particularly challenging section, and lost the trail. We didn’t think we’d lost it. We started down a well-worn section that looked like the trail but as we descended, we discovered that it was actually a ravine and what we were following was a ravine. Having made it safely to the bottom, we scoured the woods looking for the continuation of the trail. With relief, we saw a hiking trail sign and followed it … to the exact same spot where we’d lost the trail an hour earlier.  

The view was great the first time, the second time it was not as welcome. On the small spiral notebook left for hikers, I added a postscript to the gushing note I’d penned earlier. “Do something about your signs.” Of course, with a bit more careful searching we soon found the actual trail. The last mile or so, my knees began to give out. Shaky legs, shaky arms, shaky mind. Thoughts of an ice-cold beer pushed us through the final few miles. We enjoyed that beer at The Voyageur, a small, family owned restaurant connected with the Esso station in Schreiber. We downed those beers with big bowls of pasta: homemade noodles and sauce! What could be finer? Well, maybe some blueberries for dessert.

A pick-pocket in Rome

Although we’d spent five days and four nights in Rome at the beginning of our trip to Italy in October 2008, we had still not visited several of the city’s major sites, gaps which we planned to fill on the last leg of our journey when we’d spend two more days in the city.

Arriving in Rome from Siena in the early afternoon, we settled in at the Marriott on the Via Vittorio Veneto, then headed to the rental agency to return the car. Throughout our trip, we’d worried periodically about how we’d explain the scratch that mysteriously appeared on the passenger's door in Naples. After leaving the car with the attendant for inspection, and headed to the office to await the final charges and explain the scratch. The manager waived away our concerns. The contract remained as originally quoted and additional charges never appeared on our credit card statements. Apparently, scratches are expected or covered.

Relieved that we’d not been socked with a big repair bill, we took the Metro to Vatican City to visit St. Peter’s Basilica. Having walked through many sacred sites in Italy, I was surprised by the silence within the vast spaces of the Basilica – the only sounds those of heeled shoes and an occasional whisper and the guard who scolded Bill for taking a photo of the Pieta. Having visited the quarry where Michelangelo chose the block for this sculpture, and knowing of Bill's thrill at that experience, I was delighted that he'd managed to take the one shot he'd most treasure.

We visited the Pantheon after St. Peter’s and the difference was almost shocking. Despite signs asking for silence in that “sacred place,” the Pantheon’s walls ricocheted with the voices of hundreds of tourists and tour guides, even the audio guides we’d rented were difficult to hear in the surrounding din.

Returning to the hotel, foot sore and weary, we phoned Teresa, my deceased husband Vittorio’s niece, and made plans to meet with her and her companion Giulio for supper. We rested for a while, then showered and went down to the lobby to await their arrival. Giulio was strangely subdued in the beginning, not at all the flamboyant persona we’d met during our first days in Rome. He was probably wondering why we had to get together once more, having spent two full evenings with us when we first arrived in Rome. As the evening wore on, however, he grew more loquacious and by the end of the evening he and Bill were both singing German drinking songs, leaning into each other and belting out “Ein prosit zur gemütlichkeit” as we headed back to the hotel.

We’d been warned to beware of pick-pockets and gypsies in Rome and had been careful, keeping our valuables in thin money belts beneath our clothes. By the end of our trip, however, we’d grown lax. On our last day in Rome, somewhere between the Catacombs of St. Callixtus and the city, Bill’s wallet was stolen. The theft was a work of art, the thief getting inside the many zippered and flapped carry- case that Bill wore around his neck so skillfully that Bill nor I noticed the theft.

Despite broken luggage, an unexplained dent in our rental car, difficulties with the cell phone we’d bought to use in Italy, getting lost more often than we cared to admit, and Bill’s wallet being pick-pocketed somewhere in Rome, we’d visited places rife with memory and created memories of our own. And, though I’d returned to Italy without Vittorio’s children as I’d promised 30 years earlier, his family had embraced both Bill and me with gratitude, laughter, and tears.

That night, as we prepared for bed and our 3 am departure the next morning, Bill took me in his arms and praised my efforts in planning our journey. “You my beautiful Beryl have given me the trip of a lifetime. You are the best and the most brilliant tour guide I could have ever imagined.”

Loathing to end the re-creation of that momentous journey of return, I have taken a year and a half to narrate the highlights of a journey lasting only five weeks. But here this story ends to make way for the telling of other stories.

Visions in Siena

We left Sirmione on Lago di Garda, and headed back toward Rome through Tuscany with its terraced vineyards and olive groves, stone farmhouses, and hilltops crowned with castles and churches arriving finally at Hotel Montaperti in Casserta, an art filled, architecturally pleasing residence among ancient farmhouses and cypress clad hillsides.

After indulging in a swim beneath huge papier-mâché fish painted with brilliant rainbow and circus colors that spun in the breeze, we set out on foot to find something to eat. The Jolly Café and Bar surprised us by hiding a small restaurant where we dined on a delicious risotto with artichokes, paper thin veal cutlets, and salad accompanied with the ubiquitous effervescent water and, of course, house wine. The Italians drink wine so modestly, filling the glass only a tad with an occasional splash for seconds that we almost felt deprived during meals shared in common. On our own, we indulged: one carafe per meal.

Siena that evening, I wondered if travelers such as we were, return changed or improved from such journeys or if memory alone sufficed to justify such bounteous experience. I have memories of trips through Italy with my deceased husband Vittorio and tried to ascertain how they related, collided, and merged with those I was experiencing with Bill. Just as Italy has changed, so have I changed. I like the me I now am, much more than the immature Beryl I was 30 years ago. Yet Vittorio loved that Beryl, a fact that sends me to my knees in gratitude.

Making our usual quota of wrong turns and almost parking in a tow-away zone, Bill and I finally found the Il Campo parking lot and headed down Siena’s ancient cobbled streets toward the Piazza, an immense open square with bricks laid in a fan-like pattern that converge at the Palazzo Publico, each panel representing the various city-states of Tuscany. The Duomo had just closed, but as we walked toward it’s crypt we came across a cross marking the spot where Catherine of Siena was supposedly pushed down the steep steps by the devil without being hurt. I savor these stories, finding it tantalizing to enter the realm of legend in cities so chock full of stories.

At Trattoria Dino, a pleasingly simple restaurant presided over by a handsome young man and several women family members who did all the cooking, a customer -- whose square chin and dark eyes resembled Vittorio’s – looked directly at me. Fearful of wild imaginings, I focused on Bill’s dear face, reminding myself that the dead don’t return in other’s bodies and that Vittorio would delight in the love that led Bill to suggest a return to Italy.

Juliet's Breast in Verona

When we left for Italy, my husband Bill knew we’d be visiting my deceased husband Vittorio's family and friends. He thought maybe he'd meet five or six. By the end of the trip he'd met 24. The final batch of family members waited for us at the bus station in Verona -- Catarina, a fiery Sicilian beauty, who'd helped me connect with many of these relatives was there with her equally spirited mother Maria Rosaria. So, too was a pensive Livio (Vittorio's nephew) and his vivacious wife Marilena.

Perhaps it was the presence of the Sicilian faction that added the spice to our visit, making it one of the most memorable; perhaps it was the four women in Livio’ s life. Whatever the seasoning, the arguments, laughter, and singing that punctuated the time we spent in Verona that made it the day Bill and I recall with the greatest delight.

How Livio’ s family loved their “discussions.” Livio’ s women argued with Livio about what to see and how to get there with as much determination as Livio insisted on a different itinerary. Meanwhile, Bill’s camera panned from one event to the next, capturing the human interactions that so delight him. They continued to wrangle as we walked from cathedral to square – Livio proudly pointing out the restoration projects on which his son Alessandro (Catharina’s husband) was working – the women suggesting other routes. Arriving at the Casa de Giulietta. Livio insisted that Bill should pose for a photo with his hand placed strategically on the breast of her well polished statue, while I joined him. Note the dubious smile. Men and breasts. From babyhood to old age do they ever get over their love of the female breast?

Lunch at Livio’s was punctuated by more exuberant discussion about what to see next, Marilena—knowing exactly what he was up to with his camera--peeped over our heads, grinned at him and waved. With Torricelli as our destination, we headed off in separate cars: the men in one, we women in the other, both groups certain that they knew the way best. While climbing the steeply cobbled streets we met and, amicable that we’d both done “good,” proceeded to the top. From under the balustrades of the old Austrian castle at the summit, we viewed the city of Verona shimmering below us against a backdrop of golden dusk, lights twinkling from windows along the quay and bouncing in brightly colored streamers over the River Adige.

Supper that night, a succulent Sicilian veal, was punctuated with stories of the past. When memories touched on the years when Vittorio and I met and fell in love, Maria Rosaria leaned back in her chair and sighed, "Ah, Amore." I looked around the table at the family gathered there with my Bill and was flooded with gratitude that love wields such power in Italian families, embracing all the facets of life lived to its fullest.

In lovely Sirmione on the Lago di Garda

We departed Trento on a cool misty October 22 and headed from the Alps down to the lake country. The drive along Lago di Garda thrust me back into the past, when I traveled there with my deceased husband Vittorio and our baby Thomas when we stopped for lunch at a small roadside trattoria. The owners, a lovely warm couple with a wide-faced smiling daughter told us they did not open until evening but, seeing the baby, told us to come back in an hour and we could share lunch with the family—a delicious minestrone with crusty bread, greens from the garden and wine. While we waited, we rented a small rowboat and floated happily offshore with the warm sun on our faces and our baby asleep in my arms.

Bill and I were spending two nights in Sirmione, a tiny lakeside town on the peninsula on the south-side of Lago di Garda. Villa Rosa, a lovely family run B&B only a mile’s walk from the heart of the historic town , was family owned and operated. One of the family actually spoke fluent English (the first such speaker we’d encountered on our trip), provided us with a map of the town on which she marked the route to the famed Terme Catullo, the thermal waters visited from ancient times for which the town was noted.

A lovely lovely tree-lined boulevard took us past the Rocca Scaligera, a medieval castle into the town which opens into an ancient arcade filled with small shops, many offering gelato. We succumbed, of course, having found a shop where the banana gelato was slightly gray rather than bright yellow – the sign of homemade vs factory produced gelato – and sat on a wall next to the quay savoring our cones. Having been totally seduced by the dark chocolate and coffee flavors we never did get to try the banana.

The Aquaria Spa was a mystery that unfolded experience by experience. We first had to learn to learn to use the moving lockers by swiping our magnetic watches over a screen. My locker, number 10, arrived on its hanger. Clothes and purse tucked sagely within, the door closed, and off it went--one of hundreds of such lockers on the mechanized rack.

Noting that most people were wearing flip-flops, I thought them very wise. Those floors were slippery plus! Then I saw the posted notice requiring the use of flip-flops. Bill and I slunk along as unobtrusively as possible, managing to avoid being noticed by spa attendants while negotiating the large panoply of thermal options. A channel of heated water lead into a channel of icy water, from there to a sulfur-rich pool to another adorned with massage options of all sized and shapes: whirlpools, rolling beds, powerful jets that forced water over one’s shoulders and heads, another long channel lined with stone seats where we moved from seat to seat deluged by water from above.

Three hours later, our nostrils suffused with the scent of sulfur – an "aroma" my bathing suit carried back to the states where it hung around for several months thereafter, despite many washings -- we showered and walked through the spa gardens back into the pedestrian friendly cobbled streets. A delicious meal of fresh fish, grilled vegetables, wine, and crostini at a lovely outdoor restaurant in the town square, and leisurely walk through the gathering dusk back to our comfortable room at Villa Rosa, ended a very lovely day in Sirmione. Good choice, Beryl, I congratulated myself, realizing that we hadn't seen one other American family during the entire afternoon.