We are presently staying in St. James Plantation, NC house sitting for friends while they enjoy a trip in Scandinavia. It is a forty five minute drive from there to Wilmington so a blog about our life here would be all about visiting Lowe’s Home Improvement stores and similar venues in preparation for our move on 2/Aug. I feel that would be of limited interest, but we did visit two nice museums in Winter Park, Florida before heading north a little less than two weeks ago.
The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art houses the largest collection of works by Louis Comfort Tiffany in the world. Tiffany housed many of his best works at Laurelton Hall, his 65 room mansion on Long Island. After his death, the home fell into disrepair and eventually burned in 1957. After the fire, Tiffany’s daughter contacted Hugh and Jeanette Genius (I love the name) McKean to salvage as much of the art as possible. Hugh had studied at Laurelton Hall in 1930. To make a long story short, they recovered all the art they could from Laurelton, Jeanette founded the museum and named it after her grandfather, and Hugh served as director for 53 years. If you like Tiffany, you will love this museum!
The museum has a collection of Tiffany lamps, windows, jewelry, paintings, blown glass, leaded glass, and mosaics.
A sample of the stained glass windows on exhibit.
Perhaps most amazing of all, the museum houses the chapel that Tiffany created for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. After the exposition it was moved to Laurelton and ultimately recovered by the McKeans. The bottom picture is the chandler in the chapel.
The second museum we liked was the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculpture Gardens. Polasek was a Czech American sculpture who created 400 works in wood, stone, or metal in his lifetime. Half of them are on display at this museum and garden which was once his home. He served as the head of the sculpture department of The Art Institute of Chicago for thirty years. When he retired at age 70 to Winter Park, he soon suffered a stroke and was paralyzed on his left side. Despite this impediment, he created 18 major works using only his right hand! For some he would hold the chisel and an assistant would hit it with the hammer. The docent who led our private tour was very excited when she learned that we were familiar with Brookgreen Gardens (our former home was ten minutes away and we are members). She claimed we were the first she had met. Two of Polasek’s works are displayed there so we have to get back to see them before our membership expires.
One of his most famous works, Man Carving His Own Destiny, was also one of his first from 1907.
One of my favorites was this fountain where the water creates the strings of the harp.
We leave in a little over a week to visit our daughter Carrie and her family in Colorado and then go to St Paul, MN to visit our friends Ron and Jean. Carrie’s home has been the subject of several of my most popular posts, so we will see if anything is new there. We return to Wilmington just in time to close on our new home one day later. There is no rest for the weary!
The building was one of the first in the country to be made of pored concrete. The trim on the doors, towers, and windows is terra-cotta.
This picture shows four unique features in the former ballroom of the hotel: the clock was made by Edison (you can tell because he uses IIII as the Roman numeral four instead of the more traditional IV), it is a Tiffany chandelier, the stone in which the clock is mounted is one of the largest pieces of that stone type (Sorry, I forgot the stone type), and the ceiling color around the chandelier is the first use of Tiffany blue.
The dining room features Tiffany stained glass windows. These windows are some of the first he made so they don’t reflect the more colorful style for which he became famous. Still, how many college dining rooms feature Tiffany windows?
We also enjoyed the Lightner Museum, which is housed in the former Alcazar Hotel built by Flagler across the street from The Ponce. At the time it housed the world’s largest indoor swimming pool.
Since most people here have a motor home, one or two cars, and a golf cart, the garage designs are a major feature of the home.
This is the typical morning view out our back window. 
The late afternoon view is quite different with ominous black clouds, the rumble of thunder, and flashes of lightening. We have been in Florida for fourteen days and there have been heavy thunderstorms in the late afternoon on thirteen of those days. There was hail on two of those days. It makes it difficult to plan any early evening activities as the weather can make travel difficult. The area is also somewhat of a wildlife reserve. There have been deer in the back yard, alligators in the lake, and a bobcat running in the road. Herons, egrets, and other shore birds frequent the lake. We have seen an eagle on the roof of the largest house across the lake.
There must have been more than thirty manatees hanging out around the deck. It was the first time I had ever seen a manatee.
This is one of the active launch sites. The two tall metal towers are glorified lightening rods. Before launch, the rocket is moved within the center structure to prepare it. This one is unique in that at launch the structure moves out of the way. In most launch pads, the rocket moves away from the structure before launching. The odd shaped thing on the right was used to divert flames from the rocket at one of the abandoned launch pads. That launch pad where I am standing was the site of the Apollo One disaster where three astronauts were killed during a training exercise.
After our tour, we enjoyed lunch in Port Canaveral. We have one more week in Florida before we head to North Carolina.
This worked for about another hour until someone came and said it was her job to collect all the wheelchairs and put them back where we found them. With no place comfortable to sit, we then stood, sat, or lay on the floor at the entry to security until it opened at 3:30 AM. It was a rapid comedown from life on the Sun! You will not find many Vikings with many good words to say about either JFK or American Airlines. You certainly won’t hear any good words about either from me! To add insult to injury, one of my bags didn’t get on the plane to Myrtle Beach! This is very much the Readers Digest version of our problems on the flights home, but I will say that business class is much nicer than tourist! The remainder of the blog was written prior to arriving in London.
The dinner for the couples that are bridge partners.
Our trivia team. Marti, Julie, Karen, John, Steve, Mary Ann, and us.
A Cruise Critic meet and greet.
The Mahjong group.
Londoners love to give nicknames to buildings. The top building is The Shard and the bottom building tends to have changing names. Until recently when the name no longer made sense, it was named after Princess Kate.
We didn’t have time to ride it, but it would have been a perfect day for the London Eye. You don’t dare call it a Ferris wheel in front of a Londoner; and unlike most Ferris wheels, its only support is on one side.
Unlike the museums which are free, it costs almost 30 dollars and a long queue to go into Westminster Abbey. It was suggested that the smart people attend a Sunday morning service which is free and uncrowded.
Parliament Square has many statues of people who have made the world better. Abraham Lincoln is one of the statues. This tour group from India is having their picture taken in front of the Gandhi statue.
This is the view of Big Ben and Parliament House from near Parliament Square. The classic view is, of course, from the other side taken from across the Themes. In case you can’t recognize Big Ben, it is totally enclosed in scaffolding for renovation. They are also installing scaffolding for a renovation of the Parliament Building which is expected to take over forty years! I guess there is no hope I will ever see it without the scaffolding. The left side of the building is the House of Commons (or Kindergarten as our guide calls it) and the right side is the House of Lords (or adult day care).
A mounted member of the palace guards.
In the afternoon, we visited the Tower of London, the home of the Crown Jewels.
Ravens are a fixture in the Tower. Legend says that if the ravens ever leave the Tower, it will collapse and the monarchy will fall. The ravens have their wings clipped so they are unable to fly away. They have a guard assigned to feed them, let them out of their cages in the morning, and put them back in the evening.
Over a hundred people live in the Tower. To get back in after official closing hours, they have to know a password which changes every day. I think I might have to spend some nights in town.
The Scotch Guard outside the building with the Crown Jewels.
The Tower Bridge. The city is full of traffic and buses. We spent much of our tours sitting in traffic. Our transfer from the ship to Heathrow took over an hour and a quarter with no traffic on a Saturday morning, and only the last few minutes were on a road that would pass as an expressway.
Porto, Portugal is located at the mouth of the Douro River. This river is home to the grapes which can be legally used in wine called port. There are about 70 producers of port wine in the area. But even though all port wine comes from Portugal, the origin of port wine is really more about the British who originally got their wines from France. However, because of wars with France in the 17th and 18th centuries, Britain boycotted French wines; so they turned to Portugal to satisfy their wine cravings. These wines often didn’t survive the longer shipping time by sea from Portugal. The solution was to add some brandy to the wine which increased the alcohol content which in turn stopped the fermentation process leaving more sugar in the wine. The result was port wine which is sweeter than normal wines and has a higher alcohol content of about 20%. 
We had a port wine tasting with friends Graham and Sue on the left and Bonnie, Dick, Susan, Donna and Dave (hidden by Donna) on the right.
This bridge spanning the Douro was built by the same company that built the Eiffel Tower.
The trees in this park have a disease that causes the unusual trunks. The color distortion is because the picture was taken through the bus window.
I am happy to let you know that we succeeded despite a lot of the stores being closed for the May Day holiday. Portugal produces about half of the cork in the world. It comes from the bark of an oak tree. The cork can be harvested every nine years without hurting the tree. The bark that is removed will grow back during the nine years between harvests, so it is an environmentally friendly product. Susan loves to look cool and help the environment at the same time.
One of its claims to fame is being the birthplace of Pablo Picasso. He was born on the second floor of the building above what is now a tapas bar. We visited the Picasso Museum, which contains 200 works donated by his family to establish a museum in his home city.
The Cathedral was built between 1528 and 1782 when they ran out of money and never finished the second matching tower on the front of the church, thus earning the nickname of “one armed lady”. This side view with the complete tower is more appealing than the front view.
The Alcazaba is a Moorish fortification that sprawls across one of the hills in Malaga.
From this hilltop overlook we could see the bullring below as well as the harbor and the city and mountains beyond.
Mijas is known as a white town for obvious reasons: every building in town was painted white. Several streets were particularly attractive with all flower pots painted the same blue color.
A unique feature of Mijas is their burro taxis. Each burro has an official number on the plate on their forehead. They are a hazard though as a woman got thrown off one that bucked while she was waving at her friends taking her picture. 
After seeing so many large churches, mosques, and temples on this trip, it was nice to see this charming little church built in a cave.
This even smaller Church was located all by itself on the hills above Mijas. I was surprised to see a person outside of it when I looked at the picture as the location seemed so remote.
But the best thing to do in a Spanish hill town is to sit on the street with friends and enjoy a glass of sangria! After a day at sea, we visit Porto, Portugal.
Cartagena is a beautiful town to walk around in with many pedestrian streets paved with granite tiles.
There were many sculptures scattered around town. This one was especially whimsical.
We visited the Punic wall which was a defensive wall built by the Carthaginians in the third century BCE. The wall consisted of two parallel walls ten feet high and sixteen feet apart. The remains are shown above.
The crypt of St. Joseph shown above was located at the same place as the wall. It dates to the 13th century CE and was apparently where defeated gladiators found their final resting place. No word on whether the bones and skull are from real gladiators. Cartagena is full of ancient archeological sites and several of them are built one over the other.
This elevator takes you up to a castle on top of the highest hill in town. By the time we got there, the blue sky in the earlier pictures had disappeared and the fog was rolling in from the ocean, so no good pictures up there.
One of the highlights in town is the remains of this Roman Amphitheater. The seats had been carved from the natural rock of the hill side. This Amphitheater was built in the first century BCE and was only recently discovered with the ruins of an old Spanish church built over part of it.
What appears to be a new building next to the Amphitheater is really only a facade apparently built to conceal another archaeological site behind it. There are a lot of facades like this throughout the town.
No story here except that I like tree roots, palm trees, unusual statues in unexpected places, and harbors. Our ship is in the background.
The Martyrs’ Memorial, built to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their freedom from France, honors all those who died in the revolution. Russia gave them the three statues of a martyr that stand at the base of the concrete pillars.
Most of the apartment buildings in town were quite dilapidated, but everyone seemed to have a satellite disk.
The buildings in the French section of town were typically white with blue, wrought iron balconies. About a third of the buildings in this area of town were being renovated. Most of the others also needed renovation.
The botanical garden was primarily trees, ponds, and statues.
This tree is known as the Tarzan tree since one of the Tarzan movies was filmed in the gardens.
Friday is the first day of the weekend in Algiers, so the park was packed with people. Since tourists and English speakers are both rare, we were quite a novelty to the locals. When our ship pulled into port, all the workers had their cell phones out taking our picture. These girls are taking a selfie with the guitarist on our ship. Most of the women wore head scarves, but they are free to wear traditional or modern dress.
Algeria is 99% Muslim, but that still leaves enough Christians for this beautiful church.
There were many shallow pools of water for producing salt on the outskirts of town. To my surprise, there were quite a few flamingos in the ponds.
There were a lot of old city walls.
The old town was full of squares, tunnels, and narrow streets. 
Every Italian town has to have a lot of churches.
We could go down into the catacombs beneath the church alter. All the designs on the wall are made with marbles of different color.
The Tower of the Elephant was once used as a defensive rampart and then a prison. It takes its name from the small elephant sculpture on the left side of the door near the top of the door.
Because the town is built on a hill, it has many viewpoints and you could see our ship from most of them.
The city had a lot of graffiti and many of the buildings needed a little work. We did not add Sardinia to our hypothetical trip to Sicily and Malta next year. 
This banner hanging from an apartment window caught my attention. I guessed that the sign related to rescuing refugees in the Mediterranean and some humanitarian rescue group. With the help of Google I learned that Open Arms is the name of a rescue boat operated by an NGO that rescued 218 migrants from a raft off the coast of Libya earlier this year. Shortly after the rescue they were approached by the Libya navy with guns drawn and ordered to return the refugees. They refused and fled to southern Sicily where the boat was impounded and the captain arrested. Earlier this month the boat was released, but the captain is still facing charges.