From Amelia Island, Florida – To Hong Kong (Boats on Business Trips, Parts IV and V)
Andrew Gledhill
GLOBAL SENIOR MARKETING & ADVERTISING EXECUTIVE | LICENSING | BRAND & PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT | DIGITAL MARKETER
First of all, if you find yourself on Amelia Island in the top right corner of Florida, and you need to get to Ponte Vedra, some 30 miles down the coast, for urgent consultations, do not trust your phone to tell you how to get there.
It will send you round three sides of a big square. That includes the dramatic Dames Point bridge (sort of a twin-Calatrava design), but it’s not your best bet.
Tell your phone you want to walk, and it will confess you can cross over at the mouth of the St John’s river. You get a warning sign saying a ferry is involved, as if it that were a bad thing.
You don’t actually have to walk, so it won’t take 11 hours and 55 minutes, though it will take you as long as the car route more often taken.
The charming, verdant drive takes you through an ecological preserve and past the Huguenot Memorial Park (it was a bad business). You turn left just after the Sandollar (sic) restaurant, and there is the most perfect little car ferry.
Just the way a ferry ought to look.
The voyage from St George’s Island to Mayport Village is less than a mile, and takes about 5 minutes, but it’s the best $6 you could spend.
Put it in park, please.
And look at the big ship out there.
Ferry sailing every 30 minutes in each direction through daylight hours, but see website for details.
On the other hand, what if you’re in Shenzhen and you need to be in Hong Kong?
We all know a slow boat is the best way to get to China. But the best way to get to Hong Kong is a fast boat.
Yours for only 150 Yuan ($23-ish) : a leather seat, your own amenity kit – dried fruit, a packet of what used to be parts of a squid, a bottle of water…
as well as beautiful prospects of the city:
and when you get to Central, what’s the best part of the view?
More boats, including this one paying homage to Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty.
And I’m not going to claim the Star Ferry as a separate entry in this blog.
Everybody takes that already.
Pretty, though.
Signing off