Jacksonville is a very serious seaport with huge oceangoing freighters being unloaded by gantry cranes. The first one here was an ore carrier and the second two were both container ships.
The gantry unloads 2 containers at a time and drops them on waiting semi trucks. Each container becomes a full semi truck trailer.
Downtown Jacksonville is right on the waterfront. They have done an admirable job of regentrifying the downtown with the stadium, the central city square at City Hall and "The Landing" waterfront docks, an entertainment venue with a restaurant and store mall at the docks, a beautiful theater and lots of landscaping. They have The Lion King play at the theater tonight (we already saw it in Chicago though). We're staying at the free docks at The Landing, right behind the boat on the left in this picture. They're nice floating docks, but no power or water hookups, but we're self sufficient, so it's OK.
Some of you may recall when Chicago had the fiberglass cows placed all over the city, painted by local artists. Well, Jacksonville has the same thing with lions. They're everywhere. These two examples are typical. The artwork is sealed with some kind of clear acrylic coating, making it weatherproof. On the cheetah one, I don't know how many people noticed that the larger spots are all presidential profiles, like on the US quarter or Kennedy half dollar.
This is the downtown street right when you get off the boat, and the lower picture is taken from the same spot, just turned towards Nonchalance at the docks. There are about 20 restaurants within walking distance. We'll probably eat at the sushi restaurant tonight.
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