Still Hanging Out at Cocoa Village Marina

Lou's Blues Club - cool place

Nighttime at the CityWalk in Universal Studios

Hanging out at Lou's Blues Club

One of the regulars at Lou's Blues

Waiting to go on stage......?

Having breakfast with the locals..............

Sailboat high and dry - hardly ever see a sailboat on a lift
This is one substantial lift too.  According to the
folks here at the marina no one has been back since they
moored it here several years ago.  What a waste!

One of the bands at the Melbourne Festival

CityWalk at Universal Studios

One of Dale Jr.'s race cars - pretty cool!

CityWalk at Universal Studios

Doing the tourist thing!

Getting ready for the show!

More tourist stuff

Hard Rock Cafe - had to check it out

Great shot of the Pink Cadillac in Hard Rock
It revolves around the bar

 

Still Hanging Out at Cocoa Village Marina 

Another couple of weeks have passed since my last post.  We are really enjoying our stay at Cocoa Village.  The Village is full of interesting shops and good restaurants.  Also, now that we have the scooter, we have been able to broaden our horizons a little. 

There was a rocket launch at the Space Center the other day.  It was the “Radiation Belt Storm Probe” used for measuring radiation in the earth’s orbit.  We set our alarm so we wouldn’t miss it since it was scheduled to launch at 4:05 a.m.  It was right on time!  Pretty cool thing to see.  I can only imagine now what it was like to see the shuttle or the earlier rockets carrying our astronauts into space.   We could hear it long after it crossed our path.  Cool! 

They are now waiting to send the shuttle “Endeavor” to California via a 747.  They have been showing lots of pictures on the news; however, due to the weather it has been re-scheduled a few times. 

We did have a surprise visitor at the Village the other day.  Obama stopped in at our favorite breakfast nook.  We saw all the commotion, lots of police motorcycles, etc., but didn’t know what was going on.  It was only about a block from the marina.  It’s been said that he was very congenial and paid for his own breakfast – $7.00 and left a $20 tip.  He was on his way to campaign in Melbourne at F.I.T.  Sorry we missed it – not!  J

We did finally have the boat bottom cleaned.  We hadn’t had that done since we took off on this adventure.  It was surprisingly clean according to the diver.  Probably because the biggest part of the time it has been in fresh water.  Also, the water in the Bahamas is so clean and doesn’t have much algae or barnacles in it.    Frank, the diver is going to give it another once over before we head out again the end of the month.  He said that the zincs needed replacing so he’ll take care of that too. 

We decided to rent a car for the weekend and spend some time sightseeing.  Turned out to be a really good idea! First we had lunch at a restaurant named Ashley’s.  It’s a really cool place but just a little too far on our bikes.  We might be able to make it on the scooter – might try it again – who knows!  Anyway, the place is really cool and has great food.   That night we went to the Melbourne Downtown Festival.  We had been told about it by some people we met here at the marina.  Very cool!  They block off the main streets – several of the shops are open and there are vendors set up on the street.  They even served beer and cocktails on the street.  We stopped in Matts Casbah where there was a band and had a ball watching the people. 

Saturday we drove to Orlando to see the Blueman Group.  It’s only about 50 miles from the Marina.  We only got lost once!  We didn’ t have a problem finding Orlando – it was when we got to the Universal Resort – we kinda missed our turn.  About an hour later we were back where we should be and parking our car.  No worries!  We killed some time by checking out Hard Rock Café.  Pretty cool!  We made the show in plenty of time.  It was fantastic!  We had seen them before on television  - but live is crazy! 

After the show we walked around the CityWalk at the Universal.  There are several shops and restaurants.  We hung out at Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville for a while.  Of course, they had wonderful margaritas there.  What fun!

On Sunday we had planned to go to the Kennedy Space Center.  We changed our minds though – just didn’t want to spend another entire day doing that – we’ll get a car and do that later on.  SO we took the car and went sightseeing – we checked out Port Canaveral where all the huge cruise ships are.  We had lunch at Grill’s.  Great place on the water – good food.  It seems to be a “destination place” – lots of bikers were there – beautiful day for a ride….. Kinda made us miss our bike.....

We also hung out at Cocoa Beach for a while.  Finally got to do a little shopping at RonJons.  Also, that night we went to Lou’s Blues Club near Melbourne.  Turned out to be a hoot!  It’s a really cool place – the music was good.  It just wasn’t blues.  Kind of disappointed in that.  Oh well, we did have a good time and I had a great cheeseburger with sweet potato fries.  Woohoo!!

Monday we got up early and went to the local Publix.  I wanted to take advantage of having a car  - so I stocked up pretty good with groceries, beer, etc.  Anytime we have the chance – we take it!  It was sad to take the car back – but we really had a good weekend.

So here we are – still at Cocoa Fl.  It’s been raining pretty much all day.  Mike is still trying to get something worked out for  the Whaler to set on when it’s up on the roof.  He also needs to figure out what we are going to do with the scooter when we are ready to leave.  Hmmm…. Are we getting too much stuff??? 

The weather is supposed to clear up tomorrow so we may take the whaler for a ride.  We want to go up the barge canal and check out Port Canaveral by water.  We’ll see!

Till next time!

Admiral “C”