Pensacola, FL is a real city but we don’t have a rental car to go far, but we were here about a year ago and we saw the Blue Angles home base and the Naval Air Museum here. However, within easy walking distance is the quaint old historic district of Pensacola. It has the old ca. 1900 town square and original buildings. The square has HUGE live oak trees in it (see pix), the original, still functioning county courthouse and lots of shops. We found a good bakery there where we could get French bread to go with the last bit of a great brie we found back in Columbus, MS. Ahh….one of the hassles of traveling the waterways of America…..it’s so hard to find a great brie and a good baguette!
All along the waterfront in Pensacola everything is new, owing to hurricanes Ivan and Katrina. Much of the waterfront here was destroyed, so the port of Pensacola, the offices, condos and the marina we are staying in are all new. The marina just finished getting into full operations last week. Some of the waterfront now has “Dockominiums”, which is something relatively new and something that has recently been bad for marinas. A Dockominium is a condo that comes with it’s own privately owned slip at a private dock connected to a waterfront condominium. What has been bad for marinas is that the hard part of making a dockominium is getting waterfront land, getting the permits and building the docks and slips. Therefore, developers buy land next to existing marinas, buy the marina and then build condos and turn it into a dockominium. In that case, it’s “goodbye marina!” so available marina slips are being reduced. There seem to be enough transient slips for us traveling boaters though.
We’re planning to take the ICW (Intercoastal Waterway) to Ft. Walton Beach tomorrow. We’ll probably be there 2 days or so due to predicted gale force winds on Sunday, but we’ll wait and see what happens and decide later.
All along the waterfront in Pensacola everything is new, owing to hurricanes Ivan and Katrina. Much of the waterfront here was destroyed, so the port of Pensacola, the offices, condos and the marina we are staying in are all new. The marina just finished getting into full operations last week. Some of the waterfront now has “Dockominiums”, which is something relatively new and something that has recently been bad for marinas. A Dockominium is a condo that comes with it’s own privately owned slip at a private dock connected to a waterfront condominium. What has been bad for marinas is that the hard part of making a dockominium is getting waterfront land, getting the permits and building the docks and slips. Therefore, developers buy land next to existing marinas, buy the marina and then build condos and turn it into a dockominium. In that case, it’s “goodbye marina!” so available marina slips are being reduced. There seem to be enough transient slips for us traveling boaters though.
We’re planning to take the ICW (Intercoastal Waterway) to Ft. Walton Beach tomorrow. We’ll probably be there 2 days or so due to predicted gale force winds on Sunday, but we’ll wait and see what happens and decide later.
2 comments:
hello, I have been following you every time you mention Columbus, Ms and noticed your last entry mentioned that Katrina affected PCola. It did not, but it WAS terribly damaged by a previous storm. Happy boatingt, Mark
The Dolphin picture is awesome!
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