measi's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back from Florida I really, truly needed that vacation. I needed it so badly that I honestly can't express it in words. Needless to say, Erich and I had a great time. My grandpa's house is like a private little resort in the inland areas of Sarasota. Close to the beach, close to anything that we'd want to do... It was all just... perfect. First off... although I'm a shitty photographer, here are photos. We arrived Tuesday afternoon in Tampa and drove down to the house using I-275, which goes out onto Pinellas County (where St. Pete is-- and where Jason grew up), enjoying the views of the bay from the large peninsula before heading over the bridge that led back to the mainland. With each little bridge we crossed, there were beautiful views-- occasionally heightened by a pelican coasting just off the wall of the bridge. I tried to get photos of them, but failed miserably. Erich marveled-- and was disturbed-- by the straightness of all of the roads, not to mention how FLAT everything is in Florida. (after all, Space Mountain is the 2nd highest hill in the state). Unlike New England, where roads were developed from hiking trails and cow paths, meandering where they could go for the cheapest amount of money, the roads in Florida are stick straight for MILES. They precede any building, so everything is developed in an organized manner-- some houses here, a small shopping center here-- all well marked and easily found. In any case, we relaxed the first evening at the house-- Mom had left the house only the night before... so she'd left some of the leftovers from Sunday's dinner in the fridge for us (three uncooked, well-marinaded steaks plus sides). We grilled the steaks and enjoyed dinner outside-- thanks to the lanai that covers the pool area. Once it was dark out, we went for a skinny dip in the pool for a while, freezing a bit since the pool was a bit cold for our liking. We finished the night off with some extremely strong blue raspberry martinis (thanks to an ample supply of vodka in the Polish household and the blue stuff I'd bought during the Girls' Week last October that hadn't been touched) and a little romance before drifting off. On Wednesday, we spent most of the day just wandering around, doing a lot of shopping and exploring. Since I had not been able to find any shorts in my size here in Massachusetts that I liked, I was on a mission for shorts-- I wound up finding several pairs-- all but one in the mens section (of course). We also hit the cheap shoe place and wound up purchasing seven pairs of shoes between us for a grand total of $100. Considering the state of many pairs in my closet, this isn't a bad thing-- I'll be doing some tossing in the next week or so of older pairs that I haven't worn in a while. We ate lunch on Siesta Key near the beach in an oyster bar. The raw oysters were just okay, but the other appetizers we got for our main course were yummy. Dinner was at a seafood restaurant called Bonefish in the same neighborhood as the house-- everyone else in my family had been there. It was quite good, but was one of those places that I'd really only go to with family due to cost-- kind of a Legal Seafoods of the south. After all of the shopping and running around, I was exhausted that night and crashed out pretty early. We puttered around the house Thursday morning. I caught up on some penpal letters while Erich blew shit up in Unreal Tournament in the other room. We grabbed a generic chain lunch at Applebees in downtown Sarasota and caught an early matinee of Shrek 2 to avoid some of the serious heat of mid-day. The movie was very cute-- I still like the original a bit better, but it was a fun flick. After the movie, we drove back out to Siesta Key and spent a few hours at the beach-- getting some sun, marvelling at how warm the Gulf water is this time of year (mid 80's!!!) and having an intimate afternoon (*big shitfaced grin*) being sickeningly couple-ey. With the bright sunshine, the white beach sand was almost blinding! But it's so silky and cool to the touch since it's made almost entirely of quartz (and reflects the sun) that it's a treat to go there. We just need to remember sunglasses next time! Around 6:30 or so we took off for home, got cleaned up, and then drove back across town to St. Armand's Circle and had sushi for dinner. It was a beautiful evening after an extremely hot afternoon-- we enjoyed walking around the Circle for a while. I bought my souvenier t-shirt for the trip, and we went to Kilwins afterwards for absolutely divine chocolate dipped pretzels. Once we were completely stuffed and tired of walking, we drove home and went for another skinny dip under the stars, allowing that to lead to another nighttime romantic interlude. :) (this was becoming a theme of the vacation) On Friday we returned to St. Armand's circle for lunch at Tommy Bahama's cafe-- the upstairs dining area over the clothing brand shop of the same name. Erich got a grouper sandwich where I swear they put the entire fish on a sandwich. (he wasn't able to finish it, of course). We had yummy fruity frozen drink things-- since we WERE at a tropical cafe, after all. After lunch we drove north through all of the keys (islands for the non-Floridan vocabulary folk) to explore and also see if we could find a surfside place to eat (we only found one, but didn't wind up going there). Lots of different beaches, little beach villages, etc. Erich had been craving "real coffee" for the entire trip, so we then went on a search for one of the only Dunkin Donuts in the Sarasota area so we could get iced coffees. And apparently they don't make a lot of them, as they came out about 3/4 cream. But it still gave us that little taste of New England that we needed. :) Since we were somewhat in the neighborhood, we went to play a round of mini golf at Smuggler's Cove, a pirate-themed (and quite well done) mini golf course that apparently has several locations in the area. We were surprised to find about two dozen baby alligators sunning themselves in the pools of the place, complete with informational placques by the pool and the chance to feed the alligators with a very long-stringed fishing pole (we didn't). Erich won the round, but it wound up being an educational little side trip for me, learning about the banyan tree in the complex as well as the baby gators. We watched them for a while after putting out the round. We decided that we still wanted to try to find a waterside location for dinner, so we headed south on US-41, scouting out any location we could find. We ended up at Phillippi Creek Oyster House, which was EXACTLY the type of place we were looking for-- bustling seafood shack on the water. We ate at the bar due to the wait, enjoyed some much better oysters than we'd had a couple days before for about half the price we'd pay here in New England before dinner. We headed back to the house, where Erich managed to get me completely shitfaced drunk on martinis. We did some more swimming, much more bed romping (heh) and finished our last evening in Florida quite happily collapsed in bed. Saturday was our kick-back day at the house. We had to return the car by 5 p.m., which worked well for our 7:30 p.m. flight. So we bummed around the house the entire day. It wound up being the hottest day of our trip there-- extremely humid and in the mid to upper 90's all day. We went swimming for a while and got some last hours of sun, played computer games in the AC, and used up as many leftovers as we could from the fridge, all the while doing laundry and other chores to get the entire house cleaned up so it would be ready for whomever came down next. Our one little scare was a half-hour break mid-day where the power went out-- we got extremely nervous that we wouldn't finish the laundry (which was in the washer mid-cycle) or get the place vaccuumed... but thankfully it came back on. Around 3:30 we locked up the house and headed back up to Tampa, sad to leave, but knowing that we had a great time. We got to the airport right on time, checked in, had dinner, and played some video games at the airport game room before heading to our gate. Erich caught an extremely amusing picture of a Catholic friar who was about our age dressed in the simplest of robes (and cord) playing Galaga in the game room. :) All in all, a great trip-- we did a lot, but we also relaxed a lot and just let ourselves do whatever we wanted as we felt like doing things. I seriously can't wait to go back! 12:59 a.m. - 31 May 2004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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