Our trip to Florida and The Bahamas

We had two excuses for this trip. Karl Grueschow, our nephew, announced his wedding to Kira on a cruise ship at Port Canaveral, followed by a 3-day cruise to Nassau, Bahamas. The other excuse was that Gail was given a 4-night, 5-day vacation package at Disney World as a retirement gift from Piping and Equipment Company.

Florida Statehouse

On the way to the cruise, we stopped in Tallahassee and found the state capitol building, both the old (left) and new (the high-rise building). The old statehouse is a museum with furnishings from the early 20th Century and a number of important historic artifacts, not least of which is pictured next.

Voting Booth

In the Florida Statehouse museum, we saw one of the voting machines made famous in the 2000 Presidential election, with one of the award-winning butterfly ballots. There was even a ballot box in one corner, probably still full of uncounted ballots.

Karl and Kira Vows

Ceremony

There are always obligatory elements to any wedding ceremony, such as the bouquet toss, the garter, and this, called "Let's get some pictures."

Luggage Delivery

The luggage was delivered to our cabin when we went on a cruise from Alaska. On this cruise it was delivered to our ship. Actually to the very deck where our cabin was.

Cruisin'

The cruise included a stop at an island owned by Royal Caribbean. But we didn't stop, because the weather wasn't good enough to run boats to the shore. But don't worry, we'll stop on our way back to Florida.
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Nassau Night

This was the scene from the ship when we docked in Nassau, The Bahamas.

Pirate

When we got off the boat, we were met by natives in their colorful traditional costumes.

Nassau Fixer-Upper

Although most of the town seemed clean and tidy, not all buildings are ready to move in. If we hadn't been on a cruise ship, I'd try to convince you that this was our hotel.

Nassau Parliament

The parliament building is downtown, within a few blocks of the cruise ship dock. Seems that all government buildings are pink. Our guide intimated that there may have been something connected with a paint contract involved, but we didn't get the whole story.

Nassau Downtown

Typical architecture of Nassau business district.

Caribbean

We saw a lot of this on the way back to Florida. The word from the crew was that the weather at Coco Cay, the Royal Caribbean island, was too bad for tender operations. It seems that other people on the cruise who had taken similar cruises before confirmed that they had never seen Coco Cay either. Chances are that it doesn't exist.

Boardwalk Hotel

Piping and Equipment arranged for our accommodations here at the picturesque and convenient Boardwalk Hotel. We even had access to Epcot, Disney-MGM, and the
Animal Kingdom by boat. Epcot was also a fairly short walk from here.

Night at the Boardwalk Hotel

There are still dramatic fireworks displays on some of the big lakes of Disney World, but the lights of the park may be just as dramatic every night. We had boat traffic between our hotel and Epcot Center, and this scene greeted us on a late return.

Epcot Center

Even in January, the Disney Epcot Center has blooming flowers and is very much a tourist destination, with rides and theme centers demonstrating important elements of world culture, like how much German food you can eat at the Oktoberfest restaurant.

Epcot Norwegian Pavilion

The Norwegian pavilion architecture is interesting because it's designed to look like a Stavkirk. Inside, there's a water ride through some Norwegian culture, and in the gift shop there's a chance for Norwegian trolls to get together. My sisters may see a family resemblance to the guy on the left.

Magic Kingdom -- Main Street

Us at the Magic Kingdom

The original Magic Kingdom is still kept up, clean and maintained, and it's still worth the visit. It's not really a kids' amusement park, because there's so much that only grownups can appreciate. The monorail is still in use to travel among the parks, and now that includes a water park, the Animal Kingdom, and the Disney-MGM park that weren't there the last time we visited.

Animal Kingdom

Us at the Tree of Life

Disney - MGM

The Disney MGM theme park has demonstrations of how movies are made, naturally with liberal applications of special effects. This New York City street scene consists of a combination of phony building facades and a painting representing distant buildings.

Scenery like this across Oklahoma on the way back served as a reminder of the potential hazards of travel in January. Our timing was good, though, and the only weather hazard we had was rain on the way down, especially through Alabama