Friday, 9 January 2015

One last drop in...

To start off the new year, we headed back to Delray for one more quick visit with Beth's parents, Fred and El, before heading on to our next destination.

Although it was only a few days, we crammed in a lot of work and conference calls as well as some personal activities such as a daily family excursion to the gym, tennis lessons, a visit to the Swatch store, dinners at both good and not quite as good restaurants (two thumbs up for the Farmer's Table!)  and a fair bit (Ed: this is a relative term - most of the male population would term this "barely acceptable") of passionate American Football watching.

Beth was even able to sneak in a visit with her friend, Nikki, who was also in Delray visiting family.  As if no time had passed, we gabbed away for hours as we played with her smiling son, Lex, and then swatted off pesky flies while eating lunch at a nearby Japanese restaurant.  How could I have forgotten to take a photo to commemorate our visit??

For our last afternoon in Delray, we headed over to Clematis Street in West Palm Beach to walk around and have lunch.  We had stumbled onto this street when driving Steph and Saj back to the airport and had fallen hard for it.  Vibrant and attractive, it was a place we wanted to spend more time.  In retrospect, perhaps it is more of a nighttime spot!  Although we took a gorgeous drive along the ocean's edge to get there, the street itself was a little less remarkable this time.  During the day, without the sparkling little white lights and the buzz of the bar scene, the spot seemed somewhat rundown and overwhelmed with people scoping out your car suspiciously and asking for money.

Nonetheless, after having spent a fair bit of time figuring out the system to pay for our parking online, we opted to make the best of it and wandered down the bustling street to find a quaint French restaurant that had several veggie options and a nice outdoor patio.

Our views of Clematis Street definitely improved when we had a chance encounter with former Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, who just happened to be walking by our restaurant.  After El spotted him, Fred started waving as if he and the Prime Minister were good friends.  This likely pressured Mr. Chrétien to come over and say hello.  We had a brief and friendly encounter and were left with a very positive impression of both him and this cool street!

On our drive back we found that the legendary Omphoy hotel that we had been searching for on our drive down had been taken over by Kimpton and was now called the Tideline.

After a short but great trip back to Delray, we packed up our bags and headed for the airport.  Next stop:  San Diego!


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