Orkeed

It’s probably a myth that Ponce de Leon was looking for the Fountain of Youth when he arrived in 16th Century Florida.  It’s more likely that he was searching for gold and land than anything else, but after his death, the idea of the Fountain of Youth grew larger and larger, until today it’s firmly established in literature and legend.  Most people learn that this mythic version of Ponce de Leon never found what he was seeking, but one trip to St. Augustine, Florida, might disabuse you of such a notion.  Indeed, if you travel to this city, even stay the night in one of the luxury hotels Florida is known for, you’ll discover that the Fountain of Youth is just a quick drive down Williams Street, past The Old Jail, where you’ll find three arches that protect the path to the world’s most sought after water.

The fountain here is actually a natural spring, contained within The Spring House.  Around this spring, you’ll find a diorama of Ponce de Leon meeting with Chief Oriba of the Timucuan tribe.  While the diorama doesn’t show it, Ponce de Leon was actually quite short, at four feet eleven inches, as were all the men of his crew (largely because crews weren’t supposed to be taller than their captains; if you had a short captain in that time period, apparently you were destined to have a short crew).  In real life, Chief Oriba probably towered over Ponce de Leon.  The diorama also suggests the spring were just a few feet away from ocean, but actually it’s more like a few hundred yards.

What about this spring, though?  Is it the fabled Fountain of Youth?  Is there any scientific research to back this idea up?  None that I’ve been able to discern; however, as a fun, interesting place to see in St. Augustine, it’s well worth the trip.  If you go to the gift shop, you’ll be able to take away some of this water in a bottle for about three dollars.  Signs warn you not to put your mouth on the spigot or to let any of the water run down the drain — preserving every drop.  Only time will tell if it actually makes you younger.

We’ve finally made it to San Francisco after a 52 hour trip via train. The train ride was extremely satisfying and an incredible journey through the prairies of Wyoming, and the Rockies. However, we also saw a lot of nothing during the trip. America really does have a lot of desert and tons of antelope, cows, but no bears, well, any that we could see. We had plenty of leg room and our chairs reclined, plus there even was an observation car, where from floor to ceiling there was window. The staff on the train gave us some really good commentary as we travelled through some points of interest.
 
We thought we packed enough food for 52 hours, but we ran out after 32 hours, so we had to order the least expensive food, which was to microwave our own bagels. By the time we arrived in San Francisco, we were famished, so we found an Internet cafe’ and searched for a really good restaurant in San Francisco, we weren’t disappointed with one of the suggestions and it wasn’t too far from where we were!
 
After filling up our stomachs, we went in search of a hostel, the one we found that had some room, was really sweet, we actually had a door to our room, nice. It didn’t have a window, but the privacy door was a welcome site. After using the hostels facilities, we headed to Chinatown and stopped at a place where we could get a fortune cookie, mine read that an unexpected event will shortly take place and will make my life more exciting. I was already pretty stoked about being in San Francisco, so I really couldn’t imagine something happening that could possible be more exciting.
 
While walking around a bit more, a dog came up to me and dropped a flatten soccer ball at my feet. He looked exactly like my dog ‘Blake’ back home in Ireland. I wonder if that was the unexpected event? We then walked miles and miles across the city to the Haight area, then to the Golden Gate Bridge and found a park that had some rad skateboard festival.
 
So far, our across the America trip on a train, has been the highlight of my life, it’s so hard to describe that seeing how other people live, work and play, just how it really made me feel like I was a part of the whole.

Denver is a place tucked from me or it was. It was a tiny and silent location on a map I never much thought about except if a stranger on the bus in a flurried question and a letter in hand with a half in address on it asked me if I knew the capital of Denver at the six AM bus on the BART. It is an authentic story. Of course this philosopher acquaintance of mine would have something to say about what is authentic or not. Her name is name of another city, Chicago. She said her parents named her that name not because of the musical because both of them disliked musicals, but because her cries sounded so fierce, fierce like the winds that blow in Chicago. She cried a lot as a child, but she was not really, Chicago told me. She was just so frustrated that no one wanted to hear her ideas about what was authentic and what Derrida and Foucault and she had to say about the subject that her anxiety about not being able to articulate herself came out as cries.

Chicago might seem strange but we all are a little strange. Chicago just has bit more than the rest of the people in Denver or any other city. She was a lawyer in that tucked in city, Denver. Lawyers there always had briefcases and fancy fountain pens that came in only the colors black and blue. Chicago did not think the lawyers there chose those colors because those are business colors but because those colors match the bruised skies during the winter when the city is tucked in with snow that has threads of dead branches keeping it together.

She stopped being a lawyer one day, not because she was unhappy, but because she suddenly had an epiphany. She was in the wrong line of work. She remembered she was supposed to be a philosopher when the wind started to howl through the branches of the threading trees. She literally quite her practice that day and started to read Simone de Beauvoir and other people whose names I got difficulty typing. Chicago went to Paris to study the art of philosophy but she always comes home to the city of Denver where she remembered what is was she was supposed to be doing for those thirty years she was a lawyer, and still is. Now she knows the laws of philosophy: she knows that are no laws and that was why she was frustrated as a baby.

I landed in Anaheim and my life long friend, Jane came to pick me up. When we got to her place, we realized that it’s been over 3 years since we last saw each other!  Time goes by too fast sometimes. Anyways, I’m here and it was so good to visit with her. She took me to we a Baseball game – Angels vs. the Texas Rangers. I’m not particularly a baseball fan, and I’m not a Rangers fan, but they just happened to be playing while I was here, so Jane thought I’d enjoy seeing her Angels kick my Rangers butt. We had good seats and drank a lot of expensive non-high quality beer. The Angels did kick the Rangers butt.

Jane took me all over Los Angeles, I just fell in love with the downtown area. We went swimming at Huntington Beach and partied at Laguna Beach. I got to see the Hollywood sign, but not real Hollywood stars. We cruised through Beverly Hills and got to see how the rich live. We got caught up with our traveling adventures of years past, then it was time for me to head north up to where I’ve made reservation at a nice cheap hotel in San Francisco.

I’ve heard so many wonderful things about San Francisco that I had to see it for myself. During one of my travels, I met Jose’, who lives in San Francisco, I’ve stayed in touch with him ever since and now I’ll be able to see him once again and he’ll show me around the city. When I arrived to San Francisco via plane, Jose’ was at the airport to great me and proceeded to take me to all the popular bars; I was in good hands.  We walked, bussed and biked all over SF, and I got to see another baseball game: Giants vs L.A. Dodgers. They are apparently rivals so all the Giants fans were talking crap to all the Dodger fans, it was great.

My last day in SF, Jose’ threw me a going away party! So much fun! Too much fun, I think when I get back to Texas, I’ll have to recuperate for a month.

Thousands of year ago the area that is now the city of Harrisburg PA was once the home of a few Native American tribes. In the early 1600s life as the natives would know it was going to change forever. The Susquehanna tribe was living there when the English worked their way up the the Delaware and Ohio rivers along in exploration and trade possibilities. Captain John Smith was the first to arrive in the area. He came up the Susquehanna River from Virginia and made the first contact with the native tribe. It wouldn’t be until the the early 1700s that the English traders would come and trade furs with the natives.

Captain John Smith’s story has been told many times and even made into modern movies like the Disney film Pocahontas. Mel Gibson was the voice of John Smith. He wrote many books and maps of his adventures which encouraged other settlers to follow along the trail he left in order to find a place they liked and make it their home. He was the early explorer who envisioned his fellow countrymen living free on there own land making a new country that would grow rich.

Along with his travel memoirs Captain Smith wrote about the interaction with the native tribes he encountered in the areas he traveled into. The stories that made its way into the movies was about the daughter of the chief of the Powhatan Indians, Pocahontas. Historians have been debating the truth around his story for hundreds of years. When they have put all the stories together, even the one that states that John Smith was an exaggerator, it does add up to be consistent with some of the basic facts that exist. If you come stay in one of the elegant hotels available in Harrisburg makes sure you get out and see the rich history that would follow the initial contact of Captain John Smith.

We were looking for the ghost of Charles Baudelaire.  New York was a frame of mind at that time, and it felt just like our own frames, from a distance.  Some of these things can’t be explained until they’re felt keenly, in the ribs, and even then, sometimes explanations become ridiculous.  There were occasional moments where the sublime would find its way in, as it often does, but we were able to keep it at a distance with the sophistication of our own somber moods.  We had many different words for these moods, like Inuit cultures have different words for snow, because they characterized our days.

Unsettled on anything, and open to nothing that might speak to a mundane sensitivity, we were decided on a New York boutique hotel to offer the sense of difference, and a taste that we could not help but admire.  At the same time, it would have been in character to hole up in a flophouse, but this was better, because there were mints on the pillow, and to us, that was a signal of excellent decadence.  Finding Baudelaire in New York is simultaneously ridiculously easy and terribly impossible.  The exceptional problem here is that the ghost is on another continent, but we had ways of making the gloom come to us, and we beckoned.

Night was a time to beckon, and day was a time to mourn the beginning of another cycle that would last at least another day.  There were plenty of like-minded travelers, looking for the same thing, or the same thing under a different name, and we found a home among the goths.  It was beginning to turn into something that might be pleasing to continue, and we were nervous to be on the verge of something like happiness.  We listened to the New Creatures while contemplating a dismal future over a glass of green poison.  After some months passed relentlessly, I found a job at a bookstore and she started to play the juice harp in a Marshall Tucker revival band.  That was the saddest day of all.

We had left Boston and arrived in New York City around 9pm. I was somewhat nervous about our hotel would be like, since we booked our room on the Internet from a site I’ve never used before, but my friends swear by it, so we gave it a whirl. I was also concerned about New York’s invasion of bed-bugs, so I read up on how to check bedding to determine if there is an infestation. I was taking no chances. Needless to say, I didn’t have to worry, the hotel was really very lovely, and as my American friends described it as having ‘Old World Glamour’. Plus, upon our arrival and since then, there have been numerous attendants milling about with different responsibilities, like opening the front door; pressing the button on the elevator; or carrying our luggage, they were all charming. So, here is the link: http://www.nyhotels.net, so you too may find the best accommodations just has I have.

I must admit that the customer service here in the US is on a whole different level than that of the UK. Here, when our door attendant said ‘Good Morning – It’s so nice to see you again’, I really believed I had truly brightened his day with my presents. I’ve never received treatment like that back home, ever. The only downside to all this attentiveness is the tipping, but to be honest, they really earned it.

When we got settled in our luxurious room, we took a walk around, our hotel wasn’t too far from Times Square. I found it quite overpowering, even this late at night the place was all a-buzz. An unpleasant incident happened to us when this homeless man walked right into my companion causing him to drop his bad full of scrap food. He looked at my companion and demanded that he be reimbursed for his loss. We obviously picked up that this was a ruse, but the homeless man was very aggressive, but the homeless man picked on the wrong people, and my companion told him in no uncertain words to scram. That was the only trouble we encountered our whole trip.

We headed back to our hotel to try to get some sleep, for tomorrow we’re going to the see a Broadway play!

Have you ever found yourself driving around your own home town, passing a museum and realizing that you have never been in to see any exhibits. It if funny how we don’t always make the time to stop and visit the museums that are close by home. We seem to save that for the days we are in unfamiliar towns with time on our hands. Once you get inside a museum it can be really captivating. If you ever find yourself in one of the hotels Fort Wayne has and are not sure what to do, try visiting one or two of the local museums. There are five museums that you can visit while staying in this city.

If you like cars than the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum will be great fun for you. There are more than a hundred and fifty cars ranging from years of the late 1800s to the early 1900s. The building is a National Historic Landmark and was the headquarters of the Auburn Automobile Company. This is were auto history was made and is still the home of many Auburn and Cord automobiles that were built here originally. It is a wonderful step back in time and history and is best gear head museums in the United States.

The Cathedral Museum would appeal to the history of architecture enthusiasts. This building was built as the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in 1857. It is the oldest functioning building in this region of the country. It has been recently renovated and it show cases the wonderful Gothic style and Bavarian stained glass windows. Another one of the oldest museums in Indiana is the History Center in Fort Wayne. It was a former jail and city hall and it covers a full block of downtown. The gargoyles, massive staircase, marble and huge size will catch your eye. It give a great view of the history of Fort Wayne. Along with that history they have created the newest museum, the African American Historical Museum. It touches the history of all roles played by the African American in this country’s history. Then for a little lunch you can stop in at the Firefighters museum and cafe. It is of course located inside an historical firehouse that was built in 1972 and gives a great view of firefighter techniques and clothing used over a hundred years.

My Pennsylvania born mother, told me a few years after I was born, in Pennsylvania, that she had spent much time visiting the city of New York, and that I had been named after the jewelery store “Tiffany’s”.  It was not until I was in college that I watched that famous tale, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s“, and for a few hours after the movie had ended all I could do was sit and imagine life in the city.  Audrey Hepburn became my hero, and “Moon River” became my theme song.

The walk from any luxury Manhattan hotel located on 5th Avenue makes me think of the opening scene of the movie, the streets are quiet and Holly Golightly is strolling home during the early morning hours in her cocktail gown, dripping with jewelry, wearing elbow length black, satin gloves, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a croissant in the other.  She stops for a moment and looks in the window.  It was at that moment, in the first few minutes of the movie, that I knew I must get to that city and stand in that same spot.  I wanted to feel that feeling, the feeling that I imagined my mother must have felt, the feeling that Audrey Hepburn so wonderfully illustrated without speaking one word…it’s the feeling that in a place such as Tiffany’s, nothing bad ever happens.

I finally made it there to visit with my friend Robert during the Christmas season of 2002.  It was a strange time to be in New York, it followed a year of tragedy and loss, but also one of getting through it all in true New York style and strength.  We passed the armed men on the street, we passed the window displays of Macy’s, and we stood in front of the same window that Audrey Hepburn had stood more than forty years prior.  We looked at each other with tears in our eyes and smiles on our faces.  We knew that it had been an unbearable year in the city, but we knew that everything was going to be okay.  We could dream after all, because nothing bad ever happens at a place like Tiffany’s.

There are many things to do when visiting Tampa Bay, Florida.  From the sunny beaches to the family friendly attractions and theme parks such as Busch Gardens, to the Lowry Park Zoo and the Florida Aquarium there is something for everyone.  However, if your kind of vacation does not involve the heavily populated theme parks, you may find a walk through the historic neighborhood of Ybor City a bit more your style.  Located close to the downtown area and many of the best Tampa hotels you will find this tiny enclave, which was founded in 1880 and owes its foundation on the cigar merchants and the immigrants coming from Cuba, Italy and Spain.  This cigar industry was booming for about fifty years, where upon millions of cigars were rolled and sold annually.

Neighborhoods such as this across the United States are unique and eclectic, with their multicultural and multiracial populations, offering an incredible mix of the arts, the cultures and the foods of people from around the world, combining with the people who were born in these states.  As with many American cities and neighborhoods, Ybor City suffered greatly from the effects of not only World War II, but the Great Depression as well.  This area suffered greatly as the buildings and the streets fell into disrepair due to the mass exodus from the area, and the abandonment that occurred throughout the 1950’s-1960’s.  By the beginning of the 1970’s, there were very few business still operating and the neighborhood became a questionable area.  But what usually happens in situations such as this?  The artists move in, that’s what happens.  In such neighborhoods, the rent is cheap because no one wants to live there, and during the 1980’s artists began searching out the low rents of the old cigar warehouses.

It is an interesting evolution in neighborhoods from Manhattan, to Chicago to Los Angeles.  Once the artists moved in, the abandoned brick buildings began to be converted to restaurants, bars, bookstores and apartment houses.  Throughout the beginning of the 21st Century, the area continued to thrive, and even received funding from the government of Florida to continue the rebuilding and the renovation.  Today, this is one of the more popular areas of Tampa Bay, for those looking for a bit of night life, fine and flavorful cuisine and unique market places and boutiques for shopping.  Ybor City of Tampa, one of the cities of the United States that has found a re-birth, and one of the areas of Tampa you must not miss on any trip to the beautiful and sunny coast of Western Florida.