Back in town

Hmph!

Foodgoat and I go away for a week (to a place with a dial-up connection, might I add) and it's only just when we come back that they decide to make Audioblogger free?

Phooey! We could have audioblogged our vacation in Florida.

Double-phooey! We didn't take a single picture while we were there.

Well, you'll just have to read about it. Foodgoat, just emerging from the nightmarish shingles attack, and I, worn down from the moving misadventures, hightailed it to Tampa, where we stayed at the luxurious Casa de Novotny Resort & Club (catering exclusively to Foodgoat relatives).

For the all-inclusive price of one bonsai tree, you get picked up and dropped off right from the airport, made-to-order breakfast (waffles, pancakes, crepes, and their famous butter ring), fine dining (order vadas, grilled pork, burritos! Or make your own fish stew and lentils!), satellite television, spacious accomodations (featuring airbeds!), wake-up call (using their foolproof Siberian husky/toy fox terrier system!), a side trip to beautiful Siesta Keys beach (the second-highest rated beach in the country!), laundry service, complimentary margaritas (ooooohhh), and of course, a heated pool (aaahhhhhh). Their attentive staff treats you just like family!

Of course, it wasn't quite as quiet and relaxing for Foodgoat as for me, as there was quite a lot of "(Uncle) MI-KEY!", followed by leg-grabbing, hand-pulling, watergun-squirting, poking, pool-jumping, chasing, upside-downing, game-playing, etc., often from two fronts.

We also visited my aunt, who moved to Tampa last year from New York, and had two delicious lunches. Yippy for Filipino food! So we had to karaoke for a song or two (my cousin AJ got a better deal though: $20 for singing "Puff the Magic Dragon"). The lumpia alone was totally worth it. Not to mention the shrimp, the barbeque chicken, the pancit, the roasted pork, and of course, the sticky rice. Foodgoat said it was best Filipino food he ever had.

No Disney World in this trip, but we did go to Universal Studios. Note to self: Always talk to my brother PJ before going to a new theme park. Had I done so, I would steered us to Islands of Adventure, the theme-park, ride-filled part, and avoided Universal Studios Florida, which is mostly cheesy shows about movie effects (I did like shooting aliens and racking up a score on the Men in Black ride). But it did have a pretty good, by theme-park standards, burgers (it almost tasted like meat!) at their Mel's Drive-in, even though it did cost 8-freakin'-dollahs.

Other highlights included Bruster's ice cream, introducing people to the wonder of the Great Machine at Krispy Kreme, buying 50 pounds of potatoes for $5, seeing a Black Mission fig tree for sale at the nursery (it didn't fit into my carry-on, believe me, I tried), pruning the sideways-growing mango tree, and causing mass fire-ant death in the citrus tree.

And of course, we dranks lots of fresh orange juice.

So how was your week?