An Ancient Spanish Monastery and an English Pub (GART - Stop 5)

The latest road trip stats:

Savannah odometer mileage: 93,902
Odometer mileage at destination: 94,425
Miles driven to destination: 523
Total miles driven to date: 1,436
States driven through: Georgia and Florida

Okay, perhaps the miles driven to destination is a little wonky because I've been in South Florida since Saturday, but it is total amount between the two sites about which I'm writing. Get over it. :-) I spent most of Saturday through Monday with my brother, sister-in-law, niece, and my niece's fiance, catching up and doing wedding stuff. The wedding is set for Saturday and there's much still to be done to make it a magical day for them.

Yesterday (Tuesday), I was lucky enough to spend the afternoon with one of my favorite friends from high school, Lee, and it was an amazing day with lots and lots of laughs. We started with lunch at a lovely Thai restaurant around the corner from a tourist attraction that we decided to visit. Delicious food and catching up on 30 years of lost time. Where did the time go?

After lunch, we headed over to an Ancient Spanish Monastery (photo above). What is a Spanish monastery doing in South Florida? I'll tell you. The monastery was built between 1133 and 1141 in Sacramenia, Spain. Cistercian monks occupied the monastery for nearly 700 years. After a social revolution in the 1830s, the cloisters were seized, sold, and converted into a granary and stables. In 1925, William Randolph Hearst, the American newspaper mogul, purchased the cloisters and had the buildings dismantled stone by stone, packed with protective hay in 11,000 wooden crates, and shipped to the U.S. The boxes lay in storage for 26 years, before they were purchased in 1952 by two entrepreneurs. "It took 19 months and the equivalent of nearly $20 million dollars (in today’s currency) to put the Monastery back together. In 1953 Time magazine called it 'the biggest jigsaw puzzle in history'" (ASM website). This monastery is a beauty. What made Hearst purchase and dismantle the monastery, I do not know, but I'm certainly glad that we got a chance to see this lovely site. We even saw a family of raccoons (photo left). 

After that 'grueling' stroll through the monastery, we decided we needed some adult beverages, so we made our way to the Shops at Pembroke Gardens, in Pembroke Pines. There's a lovely pub there called The Pub! Okay, maybe it's not the most terribly inventive name, but the decor is English pub inspired. Oddly, the staff all wear kilts which is Scottish, but I'm not one to nitpick. The beverages of choice were margaritas for me and fuzzy navels for Lee. Drinking in the afternoon will often bring out the weirdos - no, I do not mean Lee and me. Sitting at the bar next to us was an older couple (in their 60s), who seemed like a sweet couple, that is until they had a few drinks in them and started talking to another female patron. Then things got...erm...how shall I put it...creepy! The more the alcohol flowed, the creepier it got - and coincidentally, the funnier it got. It's impossible for mere words to do justice to this Viagra-alcohol induced train wreck, but suffice to say that it was the best entertainment value for our money. Eventually to try to rid ourselves of the visual, we decided that a shot was needed. Sadly, it didn't work. There are just some things you cannot unsee.

Such an amazing day spent with my dear friend. Love, laughter, and friendship - what else do you need?

Check out all the photos from the Spanish monastery and pub visit on my GART photo site. By the way, just a little side note on driving from the Florida state line to anywhere south of that. It is the longest and most boring drive EVER!

Lee and I at the monastery