Florida - February 2025

It was a 6:30AM rise for departure day.  Just before 7:30 we were at the Concierge Lounge for breakfast, and the view from the 9th floor was quite something.  We pulled out of the hotel parking lot at 8:40AM, after a nice chat with the front desk clerks, who were very genuine and friendly.  (Again, quite different than one tends to find in South Florida.). The I-95 was its usual steady flow, but the driving was not stressful, and there was no congestion to speak of, except for a 10-minute slowdown just north of Orlando.  We pulled into the Thrifty Rent-a-Car return at the airport at 11:20AM and were soon checked in and through airport security. Unfortunately, due to another huge snowstorm in Central Canada yesterday, our inbound flight from Ottawa was late by two hours, resulting in our posted departure time being moved from the original 1:50PM to 3:37PM.  We whiled away our time at the Plaza Premium Lounge and headed to the gate just before boarding.  The ...

Another good night’s sleep was followed by another wonderful breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant, where the highlight was a conversation with one of the servers, a woman in her 60s who was born in Saint Kitts, raised in St. Thomas, and moved to the United States 18 years ago. We had quite the conversation about church and faith, and we couldn’t help but be stuck by the fact that the likelihood of such a conversation with a Marriott employee in Canada would almost certainly never happen. As we have seen throughout our weekend here, faith and Christianity are intertwined with life in this north Floridian city. At 9:30 AM, we set off for the day. The plan was to visit a State Park on the coast, north of the city. Following that, we wanted to visit a slave plantation. And if time permitted after that, the plan was to do the Northbank Riverwalk in downtown Jacksonville, with the Museum of Contemporary Art as a fallback plan in the event of rain. In the end, we did all four! At the end of ou...