Bob:

The people walking off the ship to get their own connections, like us, are usually given the lowest priority for disembarking. Thus it was that we were not able to leave the ship until about 10:00 a.m. The process of retrieving our luggage and going through U.S. Immigrations and Customs procedures took a while, but Martin picked us up around 11:00. Once outside the security perimeter we picked up Tanya and Ondina and then went to Hollywood, Florida, where we had a nice walk along the beach. The name "Hollywood" rang a bell, and I recalled that it was the location where the singers and dancers for the Jewel of the Seas had come for their final training before being assigned to the ship.

Bob:

We had lunch at a cafe in Hollywood and then toured the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables. That was a really impressive place because of its immense size and pretty Mediterranean style architecture. The walls and ceilings of the ballroom were just gorgeous: the exposed beams of the ceiling had been painted in an intricate but very pretty pattern. The pool beside the hotel was in the shape of an enormous "L" and had very inviting crystal clear water.

We also stopped by the public swimming pool of Coral Gables, which was converted from a rock quarry (for coral rock, of course) in 1931 and then restored around 1989 or so for public use. Seeing the coral rock structures and artificial waterfalls and pictures of beauty pageants from the 1930s was a real blast from the past

Bob:

Having played Tourist for a while, we returned to Ondina's house for the afternoon to get to know the family. Ericka took us for a walk in a park cum nature preserve that was surprisingly close to their home. Since it was a Sunday, a lot of folks were having picnics in the park. At least a few of those appeared to be children's birthday celebrations judging by the balloons, entertainment, and floods of children that were present. The ponds had a real mix of waterfowl like egrets, ibises, ducks, and birds I could not identify wading around or cadging free meals from the kids. We even saw an iguana, but it became shy when we approached to take pictures and disappeared into the rushes beside a pond.

The other side of the park, however, had the nature trail where we spent most of our time walking. That trail was nicely laid out and had a beautiful array of southern Florida vegetation like saw palmettos and other things I could not identify. It was surprisingly deserted, so much so, in fact, that a really big and really colorful (yellow and black stripes) spider had spun a huge web right next to the path and was quietly and patiently waiting for dinner to come along. Although quite large, the spider was so thin and the web so ephemeral that I couldn't get the autofocus on the camera to correctly focus on it, which was a bit frustrating

That evening back at the house we just had a good old family chat where we compared the family backgrounds and major life events that had shaped our generation such as the Viet Nam War. It was nice to talk with someone who really knew that the three choices faced by a healthy young male at that time were being involuntarily drafted into the military, refusing military service and going to jail, or permanently leaving the country for Canada or Sweden. I don't think today's generation X, Y or Z or whatever generation we are now up to, can even imagine facing a choice as stark and as dire as that, but that was the way it really was. And so to bed.