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| If you happen upon Palm Coast, Florida's newest city, you might try to find it on a map. Well, you're lucky if you find it. It was incorporated in 1999 and has grown since then--right off the map! I married a great guy, and he built our first home here three years ago when the pop. was 34,000. Because the lot we built it on was so inexpensive, together we bought four more. Bingo! Right at the onset of the building boom, right in the middle of the fastest growing county in the nation--a boom three years running and only now beginning to slow up. Pal Coast is now as big as Daytona Beach: 60,000.
We're a very diverse population in terms of culture, nationality, race, country of origin, age, etc., but, unlike in the past in America, we haven't divided ourselves into cultural pockets; we live together! Sometimes coming out of church on Sunday I think some people are "speaking in tongues." Many languages are spoken here--Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Vietnamese, Greek...but newcomers to America are willingly and enthusiastically learning and using English.
The influx of Europeans,in addition to a constant influx from northern states, brings a variety of cultural foods to this area. New entreprenuerial restauranteurs pop up every season, and their new spots are a nice contrast to the common chain-incorporated ones which are also welcome, like Steak and Ale, Perkins, Bob Evans, Ruby Tuesday, Outback Steakhouse, etc. Another new cultural concept is European Village, a courtyard of upscale shops and restaurants surrounded by a condo complex near the Intracoastal Bridge. Here you can enjoy music on special festival occasions planned year 'round. There's a big band stand in courtyard center and three large screens showingn selected rockers and other entertainers playing a variety of music on weekends. Prices for dining indoors or out are moderate to expensive. Coffee shops abound as do ice cream parlors, so there's something for everyone, even the browsers, to enjoy. In winter the balconies are strewn with Christmas lights,in the summer they are flower-festooned, giving an air of Italian or French sophistication reminiscent of pages in a Conde Nast magazine.
Other forms of recreation are evident in bike trails throughout the city, two heated swimming pool areas with tennis and shuffleboard courts added, and a number of new parks for hiking, picnics, children's organized sports, and family outings served by playground equipment. Ballroom
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