Out and about in Hollywood, Florida

A couple of days ago we took a long bus ride, 2 hours each way, down the coast to Miami. If you have lots of time and not in a hurry, it is a great way to see the local area and people watch. There are many characters who ride the bus and we take the opportunity to talk to folks when we can. We wandered the Bayshore Market area, had a very nice sea food lunch and enjoyed the art decco buildings in the South Beach area.

The weather has been quite changeable, some days 80F and others cool and cloudy. Today is one of the cooler days so we took the opportunity to use the local trolley bus to get to a nature reserve. It is a wetland and mangrove swamp area and home to many bird species,fish, butterflies and lots of crawling and creeping stuff. We saw lots of trees, water and weeds but not much else. We did see some beautiful butterflies and some birds but our expectations did not quite align with reality. We did have a nice walk.

When we returned to the beach area "Canada" Fest was in full swing along the broadwalk. There were booths and tents representing everything Canadian and we looked forward to a pleasant couple of hours browsing the displays. If I had been Rip van Winkle and had just woken up with no prior knowledge, I would have assumed that Canada is only a french speaking country. The booths providing local information presented their displays in English but but all others were in French - signage, brochures and spoken greetings. We thought this was a very poor representation of what Canada actually is. Perhaps we should go with the programme and start taking french lessons. :)

There appears to be a problem with the site as I am unable to upload photographs. Hopefully I will be able to do this next time.
Stay warm.