How to fill time in retirement

I am keeping pace with an average of one new restaurant during each week of 2016. Sometimes though I like to go back to some of the ones that I liked the first time. There is no bucket list goal for this, other than I want to stay alive, and I figure I need to eat food to do that. I do like to cook, and probably should do a post on that someday, but today I want to present the latest new restaurant and a revisit to two previous establishments. The new place that I went to is a Thai-Japanese restaurant located in the Avenues, a shopping plaza in Viera.  The sign on the outside is hard to read, but the place is called Thai Hana. It was actually easier to read the name on the table. The place was a little fancier than I thought it would be, and it was crowded although it was after 1 PM on a Thursday. Tabletop in Thai Hana Restaurant Thai Hana Sign They seated me in a large booth for six even though I was alone. People kept coming into the place and I felt bad that some p...

On Thursday, May 12th, the eve of the dreaded Friday the Thirteenth, I went to a contest being held at one of my favorite bars, Hemingway's Tavern in Melbourne, Florida. I had seen the ad on FaceBook, and I let my friend Ken in on the fun. FaceBook ad Not sure how crowded it might be, I decided to get there about 4:15 and order some food. They were also having a special on draft beers, buy one of their 22 oz plastic mugs for $1, then you can drink any of the tap beers at the price of a pint. I was already drinking from a glass pint, but one of the owners said he would give me the mug with 6 oz added so I could catch up. My new plastic Hemingway mug I was drinking the Green Flash West Coast IPA. A very good IPA that was going down smooth. Preparation for meeting many Ernest Hemingway's had begun. I had a great seat at the bar (seat #1 to the bartenders) and I was able to get photos of some of the contestants as they came in to get there drinks. As the ad said ...

After getting back on the ship from my excursion to Senor Frogs in Nassau, I decided to take a little nap before dinner. There was plenty of activity, we were not leaving Nassau until 11 PM, and I planned to go to my normal dinner time. I wanted to show my picture of the Kentucky couple to the ladies from Kentucky.  But they did not show at 8 PM, and I was left by myself.  Within a few minutes the Maitre'd arrived with two new people. They were a couple from North Carolina and usually ate at the First seating but missed it due to their excursion into Nassau. They were at the same table so knew the Antonio and Allan. They joined me.  They were very nice people, both played in a symphony orchestra. She played oboe and he played percussion. At least I was not eating alone. After dinner, they was lots to do.  I headed down to the Orpheus Theater where all the main shows were held. It has two decks of seating (balcony and floor), so I slipped in the back during a show...

It is good to hear from people that they do not like me leaving them hanging. As I go through my photographs, I am adding captions to each photo I keep and I delete others. This takes me time so I usually only spend about an hour on this and the blog. My lawn did not stop growing while I was away. Someone had to fill the refrigerator with food. NO, I do not have staff to do that. I mentioned that this was a solo cruise for me, my first.  To keep the price down, I choose an inner room for this trip.  Royal Caribbean does not give deals for going by yourself, they expect the double occupancy price regardless of whether there are one or two of you.  You do save on port charges and taxes so it is cheaper than if there were two, but not by much. I forgot to mention that I meant two young ladies from Ohio named Heather and Christina. I kept running into them throughout the cruise and they always said hi and stopped to chat. I guess they were probably in their 30s, half my a...