Tampa, Naples and Florida West Coast Jan. 26--31

After the Lazarus family left on Jan. 26, Linda and I had dinner at Bern's Steakhouse in Tampa, an extremely large, very upscale steakhouse, which claims to have the largest wine collection in the United States. We had great steaks, then they took us on a tour of the wine cellar and the kitchen, and then we moved on to the desert room, where we shared a baked Alaska desert(or at least I let Linda have a bite or two.) Baked Alaska is a cake with ice cream on top, that is covered in meringue, baked quickly, and then flambe'd at the table. They serve them at Antoine's in New Orleans, where I think they were invented.

The next day, we took a Segway tour of downtown Tampa. It was the first time Linda and I had ridden Segways and we really enjoyed it. It's easy to catch on how to ride it, although Linda caught on more quickly than I did. At one point in the tour, we were passing some pedestrians, and I almost ran over Pat Summerall, who is a retired television sportscaster. He was apparently there for the Super Bowl, as were lots of other folks.

We left town on Thursday before the Super Bowl, but the town was really starting to have a lot of activity. We went to a public tailgate party on the way out of town, but it was early and not much was going on there other than a bunch of ethnic food vendors.


We drove along the gulf coast, through St. Petersburg,Bradenton and Sarasota. We stopped to watch the sunset on Captiva Island, then spent the night in Naples.

On Friday, we went to the beach at Marcos Island. It was very windy, so we didn't stay long, but it's supposed to be one of the best beaches anywhere for shells, so we picked up a few. Went shopping briefly at the mall.

On Saturday, we drove to Jupiter, and got there just in time to go to church with the Lararus family, then dinner from CR Chicks.