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Florida 02: 5 Sports in 4 Days!

Five in Five, Part 3: After skipping the trip last year, we were all fired up this spring. We were actually going to do 5 sports in 4 days (not counting our arrival wednesday night)!

official schedule of events

wed | thurs | fri | sat | sun

Wednesday: Day 1
We flew into fort lauderdale on wednesday night, march 20, and headed right for our old stomping grounds: mangos on los olas. We saw the same jazz band that is always there!

Thursday: Day 2
We started off with the traditional waffle house breakfast, and then took a 2 hour drive north to vero beach. Our first stop there was to meet up with tom and deb at the disney's vero beach resort! Then we headed over what was surely the highlight of the trip: the dodgers vs. the mets at dodgertown (see my dodgertown and baseball pics). This was our first time at holman stadium, which was celebrating its 50th anniversary. This park is so small, old fashioned, and fan friendly that it's a must see for any baseball fan. We were in row 9 inside first base behind the mets' "dugout". They're not really dugouts though, since it's not below ground, there is no back wall or roof. You can see everything that goes on! It's just great.

We changed hotels to the radisson bahia mar (which is no longer part of the radisson chain). This is an execellent hotel across the street from the lauderdale beach. We found a new restaurant on los olas: louie's tequila cantina. The food was good, and bill v said it was the freshest mex food he had ever had. It turns out that louie's is a chain of restaurants on los olas. They have a pizza joint, an italian restaurant, an oyster house, and a few other places.

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Friday: Day 3
Our schedule was open early friday, so we hit the beach for awhile. We made sure to get to joe's stone crab restaurant promptly at 5:00 pm (probably my all time favorite restaurant), and then over to the american airlines arena for the miami heat vs. the indiana pacers (and I forgot my camera!). We had upper level seats, but snuck down at halftime into the 10th row. The struggling heat are drawing flies; the building was half empty.

After the game we stopped in at bongos cuban cafe, which is right next to the stadium. We really enjoyed the upstairs bar, and had quite a few mojitos! Later, we made a quick stop at hooters in the bayside mall across the street, and then checked out the music scene at tobacco road. Since it was now around 2:00 am, it was time to head to south beach! We missed the band at the clevelander bar, but hung out until around 4:30 am. Then it was time to head back to our hotel.

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Saturday: Day 4
This was our big day! We headed over to key biscayne for the nasdaq 100 tennis tournament (formerly the lipton and ericsson). There were a couple of "name" matches in the stadium, but not as much as I hoped for on the outer courts on day 3 of the tournament. But we did see amanda coetzer (see my tennis pics p1), justine henin, and jan-michael gambill in matches (see my tennis pics p2), plus jelena dokic, one of my favorites, on the practice courts (see my tennis pics p3). I also got autographs of coetzer, gambill, and kim clijsters.

Then we headed up to sunrise, florida for our hockey game, the florida panthers vs. the boston bruins (see my hockey pics). It killed me that florida had just traded away pavel bure, one of the top players in the league, on tuesday at the trade deadline. Oh well. It was still an exciting game, with most of the play down our end in each of the periods, including some fisticuffs.

After the game we went to sushi rock, which is one of bill v's must stops. I had chicken skewers and pork dumplings. Then we checked out the las olas riverfront mall, including dan marino's town tavern. We ended the night at louie's tequila cantina again, which was kind of dead by midnight. But we hung out until 2:30 am, headed back to our hotel for a 2 hour nap, because . . .

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Sunday: Day 5
. . . we had a 7:00 am flight, which meant we had to get up by 5:00, check out by 5:30, return the rental car, and catch our shuttle flight to jacksonville. We were then on our way over to ponte vedra beach and the TPC golf tournament. It was an excellent, warm and sunny day, unlike our last time here in 1999. We saw tiger tee it up on number one and saw some good golf at the famous number 17 too. I even got an autograph from bernhard langer after he left the scorer's tent.

We had a little time before our flight home, so we headed to downtown jacksonville and discovered the river city brewing company, a nifty brewpub right on the waterfront. We had some brews and some grub, and then headed off to the airport. A great, jam packed vacation!

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