To close up our Florida Christmas, we spent some time the last two out of three days at the beach. (And, besides that, events included a trip for Will to a wolf sanctuary and a children’s dinner theater, a shopping/lunch trip for Annette and Steve to a nice Italian place, and nice dinner for one and all at a place called the Waterside Cafe). When in Florida, one should go to the beach, right?
A couple days ago, we went to the Vanderbilt beach in the afternoon and I was actually quite surprised by the crowds. Some of it might be the result that this area of Southwest Florida is just getting more and more crowded, but a lot of it was we were there in the afternoon, which is not a usual Wannamaker time for beach-going.
This morning, we went back to a different beach (this one closer to the Naples Pier), and Will and I worked for quite a while on an grand sand castle. Now, when it came time for Annette to take pictures, she had a slight, um, malfunction. Basically, the camera was set to capture video and not still images, but Annette didn’t realize that.
So, the bad news was we didn’t get any good still pictures of the castle and the construction process. The good news was we got this sort of odd movie out of the whole thing, accidentally made by Annette and narrated by Will and myself (about 8 MB). (BTW, I tried to upload this to YouTube, but it was taking too long. Maybe later; when it shows up, it show up right here:).
Anyway, here’s the even more cool part:
We got home about noonish or so, and then hung around the house, packed for the trip home tomorrow, etc. Annette’s parents went out to a previously planned event, so Will and Annette and I went to a Naples Art Fair (kinda lame), out to dinner, and then back to the beach. Will and I wanted to see if our castle was still standing. And you know what? As the picture at the top of this page suggests, our castle survived all day! Makes me want to go back tomorrow and see if it’s still there. But alas, we’re back to Michigan then….
Be sure to check out the other pictures at my Flickr set for Christmas 2006 pictures.
Oh, one last thing:
Just to let you know about the latest trends, it seems like the most popular accessory down here in southern Florida is a little dog. Seriously. We saw this phenomenon a handful of times in both South Beach and here in Naples. I can only assume this is the evil influence of Paris.