Sunday, March 9, 2014

Being a Tourist in our Own Town

I am here to tell you, we're having one of the best tourist seasons in years.  I've been fairly sure of that as I've watched rush hour levels of traffic even early in the afternoon or late in the morning.  I've seen giant crowds of people walking down 17th Street.  I've sat in traffic jams caused by back-ups at the Port.

Yesterday we attempted to go to a variety of places with my grad school friend.  We thought we might go to the new Perez Art Museum.  We couldn't get near the place.  Was it because it was the monthly free Saturday or because of tourists?  I'm not sure, but I'm glad that so many are interested in the art museum--sad that we couldn't go.

So we continued south.  My friend thought she might like to see the Coral Castle.  I've never seen more than a car or two in the parking lot.  Yesterday, there were at least 15.  We could have gotten in, but even from the outside, my friend could see it wasn't what she was expecting.  Why spend the $15 entry fee?

Why have a $15 entry fee?  They'd probably get more people if they lowered the price to $5.

Since we were that far south, we decided to go to Robert is Here, one of the oldest farmer's markets in the area, maybe buy some tropical fruit milkshakes and some veggies.  I have never seen so many people in line for a milkshake--and it's not like they rode in on a tour bus--nope, these were individuals.  Sigh.  We decided to keep going.

We came home and relaxed with a glass of wine.  We tried not to think about how we could have just relaxed at the house and enjoyed wine all afternoon.  We spent the better part of the afternoon sitting in traffic.  We did have a lovely lunch at a middle eastern market, The Daily Bread.  But we could have had a lovely lunch at home.

Ah hindsight!

Today we'll walk to downtown Hollywood to see the St. Patrick's Day festival.  We'll see UV, which is a U2 cover band; we've spent some time trying to figure out the band's name.  Is it a subtle pun?

The nice thing about today's agenda:  if we're not having fun, we can go home.

1 comment:

U2 by UV said...

Hi, we hope you enjoyed the concert in Hollywood if you were able to make it. And yes, UV is short for Ultraviolet; a song off of U2's Achtung Baby album, and U2 also has an autobiography called U2 by U2, therefore a play on the book name. ;)