Florida Vacation 2002

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We structured the vacation around the superbowl of NASCAR races, the Daytona 500. We were there for both the Busch race on Saturday as well as the Winston Cup race on Sunday.

Trip Highlights

• Daytona 500
• Kennedy Space Center
• Sea World
• Typhoon Lagoon
• Pleasure Island
• St. Augustine, America's oldest city
• St. Petersburg
• Salvador Dali Museum
• Clearwater & Tampa

A Few Details

The Daytona 500 was a great experience. Our seats for the main race were in Row 2, so we were about 30' from the cars as they came out of turn 4 at 180 MPH. This year's race was wild (recap). I was very impressed with how this race was organized -- there's over 200,000 people here for the race, but we found it really easy to get in and out. If you go, park at the Daytona Beach Community College lot (Lot G) and take the bus in. Get there early (before 9) or it fills up. Parking near the racetrack appeared to be a complete nightmare. It took us less than 30 minutes to get out of there and back to our hotel by doing the park & ride thing.

The hotels in Daytona Beach were massively overbooked, so we got "upgraded" to a DUMP. Well, it was right on the beach, I guess...

Kennedy Space Center was interesting. We missed a shuttle launch by a week. :(

We did a couple other very touristy things, such as visiting St. Augustine, the oldest city in the USA. We rented a scooter and cruised around on it for 2 hours, so that made it fun. The tour of the Oldest House was boring as sin. Sea World, one of the theme parks, was pretty good. Oh yeah, and Pleasure Island...if you go, don't drive yourself (fortunately, we took the Disney shuttle thing). It's basically an adult theme park, with theme bars (80's, rock, etc.) and live music. It was really fun.

We also visited St. Petersburg, which is nice but frankly fairly unremarkable. One nice feature, though, is the Salvador Dali Museum. This is an amazing place. Dali was one whacked-out dude, but his works are incredible. The Hallucinogenic Torreador was our favorite work.
 

One of the best days we had on the trip was our visit to one of the theme parks, Typhoon Lagoon. This is a small park with a bunch of water slides and a big wave machine. We had a great time here. It was crowded, but the lines weren't bad for most slides. The wave machine in the main lagoon thingy is supposed to make a 5' body-surfing wave every 90 seconds, but basically just jumbled everybody into one another. The very first wave, I kicked a small child right in the head (sorry kid, it was an accident). They have some cool speed slides that get you going 50 MPH by the bottom. (Blizzard Beach is supposed to be even better, but it was closed for the season.)

We also stayed one night in Clearwater, but it rained, so we didn't get to go out on the beach there much. We also drove around Tampa. So OK, maybe we were Typical Florida Tourist Weenies. But we had a good time.

Another $18 well spent on a Frommer's Guide -- in this case, Frommer's Florida 2002. These books are so worth it.

Oh yeah, and the woman directly behind me on the plane ride back threw up into her barf bag. This is always a lovely experience, and a nice way to end a vacation.

Photo Album