St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida 30 October, 2015

We’ve settled into a great pattern while staying in Palm Beach; coffee on the balcony overlooking the beautifully blue seaside, breakfast, then down to the pool and/or beach.  The service is ridiculous.  Really.  People come by to clean your sunglasses, others with aerosol canisters of Evian water to gently spray your face and cool you off.  Sunscreen?  No problem, they have industrial gallon sized pump bottles full of the stuff and someone will gladly bring a small cup filled for you.  Of course the staff can miraculously intuit if you are even thinking about a drink or something to eat.  A menu full of very beachy drinks, beers, Cuban sandwiches, hamburgers, salads, quesadillas and more.  Yesterday afternoon after having devoured a sandwich at the pool, I realised I’d been signing tabs for several days and hadn’t really been keeping track of things, and panicked.  I went straight to the front desk and settled up my incidentals… which were hefty.  For the next couple of days it’s pay as you go.  

It was the last night-off of the tour and Christina and I spent it with Mike, Anna and their daughter Cora having a great dinner at Charley’s Crab in Palm Beach.  On the way to the restaurant, the taxi driver pointed out all the staggering mansions and informed us that they all had tunnels that ran from the house beneath the road and out to the beach.  Nice work if you can get it.

A short flight today to Clearwater and tonight’s venue, Ruth Eckard Hall.  We arrived in time for sound check followed by a group tour photo on stage, all 38 managed to squeeze in.  Dinner and it was time to play the penultimate show.

It was a full house of 2,180, single floor seating, no balcony, no aisles.  A warm and wonderful audience and a damn good show.

A runner to the Legacy for the final flight of the tour, back to Palm Beach.  Debby had drinks waiting and arrange a Greek style snack for the short flight back.  We landed and bid adieu to Debby, Blake our pilot and caught the cars back to the Four Seasons where we gathered in the bar with a full band attendance for drinks, laughs and further discussion about how to make the show better… even at this late stage of the game.  Amazing.

We’re now down to it, the final show of the tour tomorrow in Ft. Lauderdale. 

So long,

Richard