Home from Florida

Last night, we stayed in Orlando and had dinner at a Japanese steakhouse, where we shared a table with a local family. The son was celebrating a birthday, and they gratiously shared his birthday cake with us. Nice people. Today, we take a long drive home to be with the dogs. A few pictures from out trip are available here.

Leu Gardens

During her planning of one of our previous trips, Lisa had read about some wonderful gardens in the middle of Orlando. The timing had not worked out last time, so we made sure to visit the Harry P. Leu Gardens this time. Frankly, I wasn't expecting anything special, but it turned out to be one of the highlights of our whole trip. It's a fantastic place. Admission is only $5.

Parkesdale Farm Market

From the Sarasota area, we were heading back towards Orlando on Interstate 4. Lisa had heard of a great strawberry place so we got off highway to visit Parkesdale Farm Market. We were lucky to coincide with the great Strawberry Festival so there were all sorts of special events in the area. The world famous Strawberry Shortcake was definitely worth the trip.

Sarasota

Our next destination was Sarasota. On the way up the west coast of Florida, we passed by Punta Gorda, where Hurricane Charley had made landfall last August. There's still a lot of damage throughout the area. We took a bridge from downtown Sarasota across to St. Armand's Circle, a tourist area on the Lido Key island. We enjoyed our lunch al fresco at Café L'Europe. After lunch, we visited the Pelican Man's Bird Sanctuary, which cares for injured birds. It's a great place to visit if you like pelicans and other birds. For dinner, we found a little Chinese place that reminded us of old favorite Yu Shan in Sunnyvale (which closed some years ago).

Naples

We had a good time watching the pelicans feast by the pier in Naples. Beach access was surprisingly convenient with plenty of metered parking. Of course, we were there on Sunday morning which might have made a difference.

Ft. Myers Beach

Braving heavy traffic, we made our way to the beach for lunch. We found a pub with a view of the ocean (and more importantly, an empty parking space). We grabbed a table on the upstairs outdoor deck and enjoyed a couple of burgers and beers. What more could you want on Spring Break? Next stop: Naples.

Edison and Ford Estates

The big attraction for today is the Edison and Ford Estates, where Thomas Edison and Henry Ford had adjacent winter homes. Edison even had a full laboratory there. Unfortunately, the gardens had suffered greatly from last year's storms. The museum had an interesting collection of Edison's inventions, and a nicely produced video about the inventor's life. In his day, he was probably the most famous man in America.

Ft. Myers

Last night, we arrived in Ft. Myers and discovered once again that many tourists like to come to Florida during the winter. We survived the rush hour traffic and managed to get to the Melting Pot just in time for our reservation.

Historic Bok Sanctuary

Getting off the main roads for a while, we went in search of Historic Bok Sanctuary. I don't think AAA has kept up with all the road work that's going on since last year's hurricanes. Our AAA "Trip Tik" directions left us a bit confused. Fortunately, we noticed some road signs that led us in the right direction. Bok Sanctuary is best know for its Carillon, a set of bells hung in the tower and played from a keyboard. The largest bell weighs nearly 12 tons. The tower is surrounded by beautiful gardens.

Celebration

We stopped in Celebration for lunch at the Town Tavern, the same place we had enjoyed on a previous trip. Celebration is Disney's version of an American small town, and it seems to work pretty well. If you're in Orlando for the theme parks, it's worth a drive to Celebration for a change of scenery.

St. Augustine

We explored St. Augustine today. Rain was predicted for later in the day, so we decided to do our walking around as early as possible. First up: Castillo de San Marcos, a fort constructed by the Spanish in 1672, but used at various times by the British and the Confederacy before finally becoming a National Monument in 1924 (then known as Fort Marion). By the way, there's a fairly large parking lot at the Castillo so it's a good place to start a walking tour of the city. We walked across the street to the old town area and rambled around the mix of shops, restaurants, and interested buildings until it started to rain. After a bit of confusion with the maps, we managed to find San Sebastian Winery, where we enjoyed an entertaining tour and some wine tasting. Good timing, considering the weather.

Trip to Florida

Today is the beginning of our trip to Florida. After a long drive, the first stop was St. Augustine. We arrived in the afternoon and had some time to enjoy a nice walk on the beach, though the ocean is still too cold for swimming at this time of the year. The Sunset Grille had an excellent happy hour. We were having such a good time, that we stayed for dinner.



All the posts for our Florida trip are being entered well after the fact, but we're back-dating the postings to the date of the event rather than the date of writing - the blogger's version of a time warp.

Volleyball in Turks

We finally made it to Club Med Turkoise in Turks and Caicos. Honestly, we're not big fans of the Club Med facilities, but this is where the Volleyball Vacation was so you have to live with the spartan accommodations if you want to play with the pros. Albert "Al-B" Hannemann is the pro beach volleyball player who organizes the trips. He brings along a few other pros to help teach, and drink, with the campers. We were stuck in Atlanta with two of the pros, and met a third in Miami, so we didn't miss too much instruction that first day. I had a good time playing with some old friends and lots of new people. My Apple buddy, Kevin, and I managed to win the Men's B doubles tournament, which entitled us to an exhibition game with the pros as our partners. The last couple of days were very windy so the volleyball play was not exactly pretty, but we all had a good time. I also got a chance to try the trapeze which was a lot of fun. We'll post some pictures soon.

Ice Storm in Atlanta

Delta Airlines called us last Friday morning (1/28) to say that the first leg of our trip to Turks and Caicos (from Myrtle Beach to Atlanta) had been cancelled for Saturday morning because of expected bad weather. Wow, that's the first time I've ever had a flight cancelled a full day in advance. They offered to book us on a 6 AM flight instead of our schedule 8 AM flight. After some consideration, we doubted that the 6 AM flight would ever take off either so we asked them if we could fly to Atlanta that afternoon to beat the ice storm, and then hopefully take our scheduled flight on Saturday morning to Providenciales (PLS). That meant spending the night in Atlanta, but it seemed like our only shot at getting to Turks on time for the start of my Volleyball Vacation. They let us rearrange our flights to use Wilmington airport (ILM), and we rushed off to get to Atlanta.

It got cold overnight, but I thought the plan was going to work when we saw planes landing at ATL on Saturday morning. In just a few hours, we should be on the beach. We got to terminal with plenty of time to spare. The roads were icy so many of the workers weren't coming in. They had cancelled hundreds of flights at ATL, but the international flights were still on schedule. They checked our bags, boarding time was 9:45 AM. But just before we were supposed to board, the airport was shutdown. Get back in line. OK, we'll send you to Miami this afternoon, and if all goes well, you can connect to PLS this evening. We board the Miami flight at around 3 PM. We'll have to de-ice so there will be some delay, but at least we're on our way. Then, we enter the Twilight Zone -- it took eight hours to get our turn to de-ice. At first, we were second in line. Then, we were seventh. Eventually, the pilot admitted that all the international flights were getting priority over us so we were now 17th. After around 7 hours of sitting on the tarmac, the pilot finally announces that his duty hours are just about up, and since several passengers have been grumbling, he's going to have to cancel the flight! But wait, the tower has decided to let us de-ice next so now we're going. Applause! It took a long time, but we finally got up in the air, landing in Miami at around 2AM. Luckingly, we had taken a chance and reserved a hotel room in Miami. We managed a few precious hours of sleep, grabbed some breakfast and took the shuttle back to the airport for a late morning flight to PLS. We were on the beach by Sunday afternoon.

Total travel time: 48 hours. Two cancelled flights, three actual flights, a world-record wait to de-ice, but we were finally there. But our bags weren't. We each had one bathing suit in our carry-on luggage. Good enough -- let's play!

Last Day at Apple

Today is my last day working for Apple. So long, and thanks for all the t-shirts!