Laurie and I go to Tampa, Florida

Laurie and I took a trip to Tampa, Florida, in February of 2002. I really can't remember why we picked Tampa. And to tell you the truth, we never really went into actual downtown Tampa. But we did have fun. We were in the Tampa area during one of the times Daryl Strawberry was arrested!! And we were there when the whole Olympics "Ice Skating Scandal" with the ice dancing judge was going on. We flew into Tampa International Airport and rented a car from Enterprise (they picked us up!). We stayed at the Days Inn just a mile or two from the airport and right around the corner from the Tampa Bay Buccaneer's football stadium and the New York Yankees spring training site. Not a bad hotel...inexpensive and near stuff to do. And right across the street from a Wal Mart! We had a refridgerator in the room, so we went over to the Wal Mart and bought some soda and water (and snacks) to keep on hand.

We really didn't have any set plans. All we knew is we wanted to go to Busch Gardens, and Laurie wanted to try to see some Manatees. It was a little too cool for going to the beach...the daytime highs were around 60 and it was breezy. The hotel did have a pool, but we did little more than look at it our first day there. We picked up a bunch of brochures from the hotel lobby and loosely plotted what we wanted to do. Laurie is more of a carefree "let's wake up tomorrow and decide what to do" kind of person. I'm more "let's plan everything to the minute three weeks before we even get there". But I try to put Laurie in control, knowing that it'll be more relaxing that way.

Tampa was another great vacation for the both of us. We got to do some neat things and it wasn't very expensive. We loved the dog track so much, we talked about flying down for a weekend just to go to Derby Lanes. But we haven't yet. Laurie wants to go to a different place every vacation (except for our yearly Jersey Shore Weekend trips...which doesn't really count as a vacation), so I don't know if we'll get back there soon. One bad point was trying to buy postcards. We went all over and couldn't find any...Wal Mart, Walgreens, gas stations, drug stores, etc. We finally found a scant few at the airport and filled them out and mailed them while waiting for the plane.

Below is the Table Of Contents with all the pictures. Oh, and I have to state that I did NOT take that photo of the Tampa skyline above. Hope you enjoy the pictures!!