A Trip to the East Coast of Florida

 October 12, 2020

At the end of September Jim and I decided to resume exploring Florida.  I had not been to West Palm Beach and north so we scheduled a trip to West Palm Beach, Ft. Pierce, Coco Beach and Kennedy Space Center.  

Our first stop was West Palm Beach.  For those of you who have visited this area before you know well that it is an upscale community.  I had no idea how upscale!

These photo and the one above are of Mar a Largo, Trump's West Palm Beach home/hotel

We were able to get these photos from our bike while we were riding A1A the morning after we arrived.  There was a secret service agent hiding in the bushes and showed himself while I was taking these photos.  

It was my birthday so Jim treated me to a 4 star hotel in West Palm Beach called The Brazilian Court hotel  

Here is the website for anyone who wants to treat themselves to an outstanding hotel with lots of luxury.

https://www.thebraziliancourt.com/ 

This is a photo of our room.  The flowers were from Jim for my birthday

We went to dinner at the restaurant in the hotel on our first night there.  It had a French menu.  The photo is of the bartender and we ate at the bar for dinner

 

We decided to try and get a sunrise photo that ended up not happening but we did walk the beach a bit and took a photo of us enjoying that walk.  Not a great photo, though.

 

For our second day we decided to treat ourselves to a visit and lunch at the Breaker's Hotel in West Palm beach   It was on the way to our second destination, Ft. Pierce.

 

Here is the website for more information

 

https://www.thebreakers.com/ 

 

 

Below are some photos of the restaurant and the view,

A view from our table at the Seaside Bar restaurant at the Breaker's

 

 

The bat at the Seaside Bar Restaurant.  It is a real aquarium with dory fish and two eels.  

We walked around the hotel and took some photos.  Above is one of the many sitting areas of the hotel.

The hotel is truly was an amazing structure and very elegant.

We left the hotel and next destination was Ft. Pierce.  Most of the day was driving along A1A looking at the homes along the Atlantic.  It was a beautiful drive. We arrived at the hotel in the rain so we just relaxed to be ready for another adventure.  We were lucky to find the Navy Seals museum on our drive into Ft. Pierce so we decided to visit the next day.

The Navy Seal museum was very interesting with lots of exhibits both inside and outside and we spent two hours visiting.  Below are some photos from out visit.

 

https://www.navysealmuseum.org/ 

If you are ever in Ft. Pierce this museum is definitely worth a visit.

We continued on our planned trip to Coco Beach/ Kennedy Space Center.  Coco Beach is very honky tonk and reminded me of Seaside Heights.   There are lots of bars and miniature golf places along the road.  It was definitely a different crowd than West Palm Beach.

We were able to get the top floor at the Hampton Inn which was considered beachfront.  We did have to walk a short walk along a pathway to access the beach but the view was great.

Since this is the east coast of Florida pictures of sunrise rather than sunsets (west coast) were the pictures to capture.  Most of the mornings were cloudy so the sunrise was not that great but the last morning we were able to get a few photos of sunrise.

This one looks like there was a funnel cloud but it was just the way the sun rose that morning that created that image.

On Sunday early morning we rode up AIA north so that we could get some photos of Patrick Air Force Base.  We were able to get a 30 mile ride in that morning with a quick rest stop at a 7-11

The balance of Sunday was saved for the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island.  We felt that we had plenty of time as we alloted 4 hours for the visit.  There are many exhibits that will take 4 hours to complete.  The bus tour to the launch pad was not running and that would have taken an additional 2 hours so if you do decide to visit in 2021 when the bus tour is scheduled to resume you should allow at least 6 hours for your visit.  The good thing was that you could purchase a half price entry ticket if you purchased one full price ticket at this time since the bus tour was not in service.  There is also another purchase option of paying full price for two tickets with complimentary return tickets in 2021.   It's your choice!

Here is is the link for more information on the Kennedy Space Center.

https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/?utm_source=GoogleMaps&utm_medium=Local&utm_campaign=visitorcomplex

It was definitely worth the visit.  Below are photos from our visit.

On our way out of Coco Beach I wanted to get a photo of a street sign with a strange name that I had seen on our bike ride the day before.    I have been sending these to Our Lady of the Perpetual Headwinds....aka Laura....so that I can help her add to her collection of strange/interesting street signs.

Turns out that Coco Beach was the site of some of the filming for I Dream of Jeannie.  Remember that show?

As are most vacations the trip home seemed a bit long but we had lots of great memories from this visit to the east coast.  We plan to continue exploring the east coast in the future starting where we left off and continuing northward.