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Florida 03: 4 Sports in 4 Days!

Five in Five (Four in Four), Part 4: This year for reasons beyond my control, we had to limit our sports trip to just 4 days and 3 nights. So we had a lot of stuff to do in a shorter period of time. The only real casualty was our annual panthers hockey game.

official schedule of events

wed | thurs | fri | sat

Wednesday: Day 1
We left philly on a 7:30 AM flight to orlando. We checked in at our hotel, the hard rock at universal studios. If you like the cafes, you'll love this rock 'n' roll themed hotel! But we didn't have time to fool around. We had a gourmet lunch at emeril's, and then made a 3 hour push through universal studios islands of adventure. My favorite ride is still spiderman. We got very wet on dudley do right's ripsaw falls log flume and the popeye's barge raft ride. Bill V had his cell phone shorted out, and then he lost his hat on the dueling dragons roller coaster. A total amateur!

At night we headed over to the orlando magic vs. miami heat game (see my basketball pics). I tried the new bacardi vanilla with ginger ale which was featured at the arena's bar. A very smooth drink! The magic won fairly easily. After the game we checked out universal's entertainment area, where I had a cheeseburger in paradise at jimmy buffett's margaritaville (very average) and then we hung out at the piano bar in pat obrien's, which is a nice extension of the original joint in new orleans. Be sure to try the hurricane!

Thursday: Day 2
Today was the opening round of the bay hill golf tournament, which tiger woods had won the previous two years. We were running a little late, needed to find free tickets (which we did!), but missed tiger and his early tee time. Instead, we followed jack and arnie around a bit. Afterwards, we had to change hotels, and checked into another universal studios entry, the royal pacific. I took a quick dip in the pool while bill v napped. Then we had dinner in downtown disney at one of our favorite places, the wolfgang puck cafe. To round out the night, we partied over at pleasure island.

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Friday: Day 3
Friday was moving day (as they say in golf). We headed south to thomas j. white stadium in port st. lucie to see the mets vs. the astros (see my baseball pics). The game was a bit of a bore (I think houston was up 2 - 0 through 6, when most of the stars left the game). On our way south, we stopped in fort lauderdale for some shopping at tommy bahama (our favorite place for "resort" wear) and some beer and sushi (bill v strikes again!) at louie's oyster, which is part of the louie's family of restaurants on los olas.

We finally made it to joe's stone crab restaurant at around 10:45 PM. Unfortunately, there's a shortage of stone crabs this year, so they were mixing in some similar crabs from mexican waters. They were okay but not as good as the genuine article. By 1:00 am, we were finished with dinner and ready for south beach! Another old standby is the clevelander bar, where I hung out only until around 4:30 am. Then it was time to head back to our room at the fontainebleau hotel.

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Saturday: Day 4
For our final day, we headed over to key biscayne for the nasdaq 100 tennis tournament (formerly the lipton and the ericsson). We saw the end of jennifer capriati's opening match, followed by the swan song for michael chang (who has announced this is his last year on tour) vs. andre agassi (see my tennis pics p1). I also saw my girl jelena dokic over on the practice court (see my tennis pics p2), and amanda coetzer on an outside court knocked off in the first round (see my tennis pics p3). Between matches, we stopped by the bacardi tent for some pina coladas and daiquiris. They are the best drinks when you're outside, it's 80 degrees, and it's march! But by 5:00 pm it was time to head for the airport and back up north.

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