Monday, March 11, 2013 – Vero Beach:

            Last night after our guests left, we saw dolphins swimming around the boats.  What a lovely sight combined with a beautiful sunset!

Dolphin swimming around the boat

            I really have a hard time with the time change – both of them – spring and fall.  It takes me a week to adjust my body clock.  So last night we slept great – for about 10 hours!  Even the cat didn’t want to get up!  However, when we did peek out the window, we found that our surrounding neighbors apparently have no trouble with the time change, and they were all gone!  So we bounded out of bed, and the cat woke up, and remembered she wanted breakfast – RIGHT AWAY! -  and so the day began.

            Yesterday, we had cleaned the boat from top to bottom, inside and out, so we had a pretty chore free day today, so the main item on our agenda was trying to figure out what we wanted to do today.  We came up with taking the free bus to the beach and having lunch at a place that was highly recommended, The Lemon Tree.

            First though we had to kill some time by playing cards while we were considering the day; and while we were doing that, kitty cat decided to take a little sun bath out on the deck of the boat.  Then, while we were playing cards, Bob happened to notice a huge heron sitting on the piling by the stern of the boat; and that made me realize that Lucy was totally ignoring the bird instead of her usual behavior of running back inside the boat in total terror convinced that she would be the bird’s lunch.  I think she’s making progress!

Heron sitting on the piling by the dock

            So at 12:30 p.m., we put on some decent looking clothes and caught the bus that stops here at the marina and headed to the beach area.  It’s a lovely part of town, upscale, sophisticated, and a pleasure to walk around in.  Once the bus dropped us off, The Lemon Tree was just around the corner and down a block, and when we got there, the nice man at the door, (I’m assuming he was the owner) asked us if we could wait just a few minutes, so we sat outside and people watched and read the menu.  Bob ordered the chicken avocado club on focaccia, and I ordered shrimp scampi.  After lunch they gave us a free sorbet for dessert!  Lunch was awesome!  A fantastic recommendation!  After lunch we decided to walk back to the boat, which only took about 20 minutes and was a great way to walk off those lunch calories.

            Once we got back to the boat around 3:00 p.m., we were surrounded once again by boat neighbors, and one of the new boat neighbors was an architect, so Bob spent sometime this afternoon talking “shop.”

            We are planning on leaving here on Thursday, and may go all the way to Cocoa in one day, but we’ll have to see what the weather does, etc.  Tomorrow, we may take our bikes (yikes!) or the bus to the little grocery store again for something exciting like eggs and milk.

            Here’s hoping something exciting happens tomorrow, but just remember my “mantra” – Boring is good!