We're On Our Way!

This is just terrific! We are very excited about the prospects for the next 7 weeks...getting to see family whom we've never met or haven't seen in a zillion years, plus friends for almost as long. This will be the start of a long narrative of our adventures.

Here's our brand-new Spirit Air machinery over Cuba (how could it have 13 million inhabitants!):
Son, Ali, met us at the airport in Ft. Lauderdale. Here he is, up to one of his favorite pastimes--taking people out to dinner! This restaurant happens to belong to a Persian Baha'i friend in South Florida. Me? I was having a light and delicious barley soup...and manning the camera as usual.
After dinner he drove us about an hour North to Port St. Lucie, and backed us into the garage of his brand-new house there. He's just moved in and the phones, alarm and cable network hadn't been installed yet. (Today technicians showed and hooked up everything, typical of U.S. efficiency.)
Julie and I were totally surprised that Ali had just purchased this king-size bed set, with the fabulous Tempur-Pedic foam mattress. The thing is about 12 inches thick. I think we're gonna be totally spoiled for sleeping the rest of the trip. Julie didn't waste any time slipping in!
The next morning we just about got buried in the grass around the house (it's about 4 inches deep when well trimmed!). That's Ali's house in the background. It's a three bedroom, 2-1/2 bath Townhouse.
View of the lake and fountain from Ali's upstairs bedroom window:Street view from the same window:View from Ali's upstairs office window in the rear of the house (the large roof is his garage).This whole area is an invented, but actually functional town. The developers have placed this church-like edifice, called the Town Hall in the middle of town (every hour during the day it chimes the hour). There are restaurants and barber shops and shopping areas and a market there. The town is called "Tradition".Julie made a comment soon after we saw what this place was all about...that it was almost right out of the movie, "Truman". That's a perfect description of the place, almost too down-pat and perfect to be real. The interesting thing is that everything seems to be functioning well. We saw some young ladies who jumped out of their car to look at a model home and sighed that it was just gorgeous...Ali had to spend all day today at work (in spite of not getting to bed until after 1am last night) and we had a great time relaxing and taking walks and attending to the technicians who showed up to hook up stuff.

This little fountain was a delight to the area's kids. We watched them darting in an out of it and having a great time. We guess that there must even be a school somewhere nearby.
Julie's been looking for a pool so that she can keep up with her exercises. We actually found one on one of our many walks around "town" today, but Ali isn't familiar with the community's plans yet to know if we can use it.

Tomorrow we plan to drop Ali at work early and head for the VA hospital in West Palm Beach to see if I can get some tests done and straighten out some online connections there.