Soaking up the Sun Like a Sponge

After visiting Spongeorama on Wednesday, we drove to Sanford, Florida, just northeast of Orlando, to visit Joe's brother Ed, his wife Concetta, and Concetta's dad Tony. We hadn't seen them in a long time, and we had a great visit with them Wednesday night, and enjoyed some delicious, authentic Italian food prepared by Concetta, who was born in Italy.  On Thursday, they gave us a tour of Sanford and the surrounding area. The weather in the morning was cool, probably mid 30s, but there was lots of sunshine and later in the day we were in the 70s. The first place we went was to Blue Spring State Park, where we saw more of the Florida manatees. As opposed to yesterday at Craig Park, where we saw only a few manatees, today's manatee count was 655. (Yes, someone actually counted them.) Blue Spring State Park Manatees Walking path in park We drove through some surrounding towns, including Stetson University in DeLand, Florida. According to Ed, Stetson was named for the man who...

On Wednesday, we drove to the city of Tarpon Springs where we visited Spongeorama and the Sponge Docks. The waterfront area of Tarpon Springs is still a working seaport, and the town has the feel of a distinctive Greek fishing village. Boutiques, restaurants, bakeries, and shops line the main street, called Dodecanese Street.  Dodecanese Street, Tarpon Springs If you haven't figured it out by now, Tarpon Springs is the home of a large commercial sponge industry. The sponges were discovered in 1890 accidentally when a Key West fisherman caught the sponges up into his nets and realized there might be a commercial product there. Sponge diving in Florida soon became a thing, and men from Greece, who were already harvesting sponges there, heard of sponges being discovered in Florida, and flocked to Tarpon Springs. Hence the Greek nature of the town. There are many Greek restaurants and bakeries, and the street signs are in both English and Greek. We began our day with a tour of the infa...

 In Eunice, we visited the Eunice Depot Museum.  When we walked in, a lady immediately greeted us, not by saying "Welcome" or "Hello" or anything like that. Instead she said "Y'all here for the French Table?" It took me by surprise and I think I just mumbled, in response, "I don't know what a French Table is." I immediately thought it had something to do with food (for my Pittsburgh readers, like a cookie table.) I'm thinking different types of French bread and other French foods. But it has nothing to do with food. Apparently a group of people meet once a week in the back of the museum and sit around a table speaking French. They do this in an effort to preserve the French language in Louisiana that is sadly dying out. Anyone is welcome to join the French table, and when we made our way to the back of the museum, they were intrigued that we were visiting from Pennsylvania. They invited us to join them and though we didn't sit at ...

 Before I start the cruise part of the blog, I thought I would add a little information about our South Louisiana adventures. Last week, we took a trip through some small towns in south central Louisiana. Some of the towns we went through were Cecilia, Arnoldville, Leonville, Sunset, Opelousas, Washington, Ville Platte, Mamou, and Eunice. We had a couple of interesting adventures in Opelousas and Eunice. In Opelousas, we stopped at the Louisiana Orphan Train Museum, a museum about orphans and the Orphan Train Movement. The museum is housed inside a restored train depot. Now if you're like me, you've probably never heard about the Orphan Train Movement. At the museum, we learned some really interesting history. Here's how the story goes: a lady named Catherine Fitzgibbon contracted cholera and was so sick that she lay in a coma on her death bed. During the coma, she had a vision of children, and promised God that if he spared her from the illness, she would devote the rest o...

Our Catholic women's group, Magnificat, has invited us to go on a group Caribbean Cruise. The leadership of Magnificat, the CST (Central Service Team) likes to visit the Chapters. They choose an area of the country and visit as many Chapters as they can in that area. When they were trying to decide how best to visit the numerous Chapters in the Caribbean, they came up with the idea of a cruise. They made it a group thing and invited others to join. The cruise will take place from Jan. 31 to Feb. 14. This timing occurs while we are spending our winter in South Louisiana. The cruise leaves out of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. So we decided we would drive from our home base in Morgan City, La. to Ft. Lauderdale for the cruise. And since we never go places directly, we've (surprise, surprise) added some stops along the way there and back. A little back story before I tell about our first stop: When I was a teenager, our family took a vacation to various places in Florida. One of the pla...