Monday, April 20, 2009

Vacation: Thursday - Sunday April 16-19

Thursday, April 16:

We started the day by visiting the Mixon Fruit Farm. We wandered around the citrus groves, checked out their butterfly garden and shopped in the gift shop, which carry a lot of cool Florida souvenirs.

For a tour of the Fruit Farm, click here.

We also did some "regular" shopping and had a nice late lunch at the Longhorn Steakhouse. Awesome steak!

Friday, April 17:

We had Ken's convertible, and we cruised around town while doing some shopping. We ate at Chili's and just had a nice shopping day.

The Family Fun Movie Night that was previously canceled due to a murderer that was on the loose (!) was rescheduled for this night. All of us went over to Sarah's school for a screening of the Swiss Family Robinson movie. They also served hot dogs and movie candy. It was a pretty nice evening!

Saturday, April 18:

Our entire neighborhood have a garage sale weekend every month, where you can drive around and people have their sales in their driveways. I acted as chauffeur while Elisabeth and Carola looked over what was for sale, they love garage sales, or "loppis" as we call it in Sweden.

Ken took Sarah to a birthday party at the Sarasota Jungle Gardens, so we too the opportunity to go down to Siesta Key and take a nice walk on the beach. Siesta Key has been voted the nicest beach in the US several times, and it is easy to see why when you step onto the bright white and powder fine sand!

We also stopped by the Daiquiri Deck for lunch, where we ordered alligator as an appetizer. The verdict? Elisabeth and Carola said not bad at all!

After being home for some relaxation we headed out for dinner at Jo To's Japaneses steakhouse, where they serve the food teppanyaki-style, cooking it on a huge grilling table in front of you. Very entertaining and YUMMY!

Sunday, April 19:

Ken happened to see that the famous Venice Shark Tooth Festival was going on this weekend, so we headed down there in the morning.

Venice is considered the shark tooth capital of the world, since here you can find lots of fossilized shark teeth.

There were a lot of things to look at, LOTS of shark teeth! There were also lots of other fossils to buy, such as trilobites. Elisabeth was happy to get a real alligator head.

At the Venice Shark Tooth Festival



After checking out the festival we took a very long walk along Venice Beach, and then we had a quick lunch at the old fashioned beach cafe.

Our last night we had a BBQ at home with guacamole and salsa made from our first picked jalapenos!


And this morning I finally took them to Tampa airport. It is so empty here now. Of course it is nice to go back to everyday life and routines after almost 3 weeks of going non-stop, but we sure will miss out visitors! I hope they had a great time, we sure enjoyed having them here and showing them around...

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