Showing posts with label Hollywood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hollywood. Show all posts

Thursday, December 22, 2011

TP Thursday: Holiday Trees

As the holiday season wraps itself around our chilly Pacific Northwest, we start thinking about our holiday trees.

Not the holiday kind under which gifts are placed, but those trees that bring memories of holidays, or vacations, we’ve taken during the past year.  Instead of ornaments, our trees are decorated with wonderful memories of time spent together, adventures shared, new friends made and destinations discovered. 

There’s  Honolulu’s Waikiki Beach on Hawaii’s island of O’ahu.

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And Hollywood, Florida. . .


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And Marbella, Spain. . .

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And Tenerife, Canary Islands. . .

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We are hoping your tree is decorated with wonderful holiday memories as well!

It is Travel Photo Thursday!  Take a trip around the world by visiting Budget Traveler’s Sandbox, the blog where the project began.

Friday, April 29, 2011

Between Ocean Drive and Surf Road

That’s been our address for this carefree week of sun and sand – can you think of any better location?
We’ll be moving into the next phase of our adventure this weekend but before doing so, I had to bounce the beach ball down memory lane one last time:

The concierge at our hotel had very tactfully told us that Fort Lauderdale Beach is still a haven for itsy-bitsy, teeny tiny teens in their bikinis. Hollywood Beach, where we are, is more of a ‘baby boomer beach,’ she said. (You get the picture).

But I still wasn’t going to be deterred from getting to the  beach from my “Where the Boys Are” movie.  And I did as evidenced by the photo below.

Please note, that while I may look like a boomer; below that wind-blown hairdo and tee-shirt was a bikini-clad college girl humming the movie’s theme song. . .
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You can imagine my joy when the taxi boat guide announced that Connie Frances had been on this very same beach less than a year ago “singing her heart out.”
And then she added, “. . . she was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the movie’s  release.”  

I knew then, that it was time to head back to the ‘boomer beach.’

Note:  To hear the song sung by Connie, visit the post, “Where the Boys Are”

Monday, April 25, 2011

Hooray for Hollywood!

Hooray, indeed! It is everything Connie and her friends promised in that long ago movie (see the last post if that doesn’t make sense). . .the white sand, beach umbrellas, beautiful bikini-clad bodies, (some bodies that really shouldn’t be in bikinis or shorts, for that matter) and sun. Glorious, but intense, sun.

hollywoodcruise 2011 006 85-degrees today and the same for tomorrow. And the Hollywood Broadwalk is everything the tourist association promised.  We understand now why Travel+ Leisure Magazine voted it one of the best boardwalks around.

In fact the Broadwalk provided a type of Easter parade yesterday as hundreds strolled, biked, skated, jogged or ran along in front of the hotel.  This morning it was nearly empty as we set out to explore
hollywoodcruise 2011 003 Our north-facing room couldn’t be better for seeing both the Intra-coastal Waterway to our right and the Atlantic Ocean to our left. Sunrise right; sunset left.

We also had a late afternoon Easter Parade of cruise ships setting sail from Port Everglades which is less than 10 miles from us.
The first ship out was ‘our’ Solstice! It will do a final spin through the Caribbean before we board it for Europe next weekend. 
hollywoodcruise 2011 005 Among the ship’s departing yesterday was the Celebrity Infinity and on board it were our cruising buddies Bill and Madelin (they are the friends we made on a repositioning cruise a few years ago.) They called us just as their ship entered the Atlantic and chatted as the ship set sail for Seattle!

Monday, April 11, 2011

Hello to Hollywood

 
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We’ll soon be saying Hello to Hollywood. . .Florida that is. This Hollywood is snuggled between Fort Lauderdale and Miami way down there on the state's southern tip.  

We’ll be snuggled between the Atlantic Ocean and Florida’s Intracoastal Waterway at the Hollywood Beach Marriott thanks to  Joel, who found another of  ‘those deals’ for which he’s famous for sniffing out.  And of all places; he found a hotel deal on the timeshare website I’ve mentioned before, Interval International

We checked calendars, noted the gray skies that darken and dampen our Pacific Northwest spring and it took no more than a matter of minutes to book a few extra days in Florida sunshine: the departure point for our Great Spring Adventure.

Our ‘boutique-style’ hotel, as its web site tells us, is on the city’s famous Broadwalk (yes, it is a ‘Broadwalk’) that has been named one of the best beach ‘boardwalks’ by Travel + Leisure Magazine.  We plan to keep the D2G alive with daily walks along the 2.5 mile brick walkway .

It is also close to Port Everglades from where our Celebrity ship will set sail for Barcelona.HAL 2009 cruise photos 004  Celebrity is one of 13 cruise lines – and some 50 ships -- that use this port.  We will be joining the estimated 3.8 million passengers who’ll pass through this place in 2010-2011.

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