Visit to Sunshine State - Florida

It was close to two years of stay in the US and I had the opportunity of visiting most of the places in the east coast like NYC, DC, the great Niagara and the Atlantic city just to name a few apart from the regular visit to my brother @ Detroit, MI

Having visited the east coast, my friends and I decided to visit places down south of US. To start with, we decided to visit Florida a place known for it's beaches. It was the christmas season of 2007 and we skipped the usual white christmas in NY to celebrate our christmas down south in Tampa, Florida.

It didn't take too long to decide we had already started looking out for the tickets on the internet. We got what we thought to be the best deal available for the christmas day long weekend. We just went ahead and booked our tickets to Tampa!! We had few joining us from Delaware.

The flight journey didn't take too long and we were already approaching our destination. I got to get a glimpse of the ariel view of the land strip from the flight window... It was one of the most beautiful views of the landscape that I have ever seen!!

As we deplaned we got to hear that the friends from Delaware had already arrived. But we also got to hear the bad news that the baggage of our collegues from Delaware went missing.

Our friends from Tampa had come to receive us at the airport. We reached the apartment and spent the rest of our evening partying and planning on the places to visit for the remaining days of our vacation.

The next day, which was the first day of our long weekend, we started off to spend sometime to relax at the Pier. Later that evening, we headed towards the beaches. As always the visit to a beach makes your mind clear of all the tensions. We returned home later that evening and took no time to go back to sleep.

On day 2 we decided to visit the Sea World. This is one of the many theme parks that you get to see in Orlando a place close to Tampa. We had to drive early that morning in order to reach our destination in time. So it was told to me to be the one to wake everyone up as always!!

We took no time in getting ready to visit the Sea World. We had a short stop over @ the Dunkins to grab our breakfast. We had to drive for 2 1/2 hrs to reach the Sea World. Once we were in there, we got to see some of the fishes like the sting ray, the sharks and the dolphins in it's natural habitat. We also got to visit some of the shows like the Shamu the Whale show, the Sea lion's show not to forget the dolphin show. It was really amazing to see these fishes. We also got to take a roller coaster ride which was one of the other attractions @ the sea world.

We decided to spend day 3 water rafting and barbequing at a park close by. Once we reached the park, we hired two rafts with three of us in each of them.....It was fun to row your raft.

As I said that there were two boats...and I was in the second boat trying to row all the way down the lake to watch the alligators. My friends in the first boat had the experience of rowing and hence it was really easy for them. While, it was pretty new to us.

We were rowing our boats with a lot of effort. But the boat seem not to move a inch. Later we realised (when we watched the videos) that both of us were rowing our boat in the opposite directions....LOL. All of us had fun watching the video!!

After we were done with the rowing...we went on to prepare the BBQ. BBQ's really turned out to be yummy. Each one of us enjoyed every bite of it. We returned home a bit early that evening.

The next day which was day 4 of our trip...we decided to just spend time to relax. A few of my friends suggested that we play tennis as their apartment had it's own tennis court. It was a bit hot outside. As hot as our indian summer. We had fun playing tennis and felt tired running around the court to hit the ball. Later we went back to our apt to have our lunch and soon we headed back home.