FLORIDA IN REVIEW . . .

Ahhh, the Tampa Bay Area. It's such a weird place and we make fun of it all the time, yet we keep going back. Our second trip to the area in two years ... what exactly is the draw? Who knows, but there are highlights nonetheless ...

Friday
... after morning spa treatments, Wong, Hong and I hit the road and head into Tampa for a late lunch. The strip we hit, near the Yankees' spring training facility, reminds me a lot of Joisey: endless two-way mini-highway with lots of strip malls and restaurants on either side. In addition to the not-quite-warm weather, this gives us another reason to mutter "we could've stayed in the New York area for this ...." After lunch, we spend almost three hours in ... a Borders bookstore, reading magazines and sipping tea. Hey, don't make fun. "It's Tampa," we reason. "What the heck else is there to do?!"

... we pick up the Chief of Staff at the airport and head back to the Resort to lay around and do nothing of any significance. Everyone checks their email and surfs the Web. See -- you can tease me all you want for bringing Bob on vacation with me, but if I can't survive without the Internet, neither can you!

... cheap but delicious seafood dinner, and we all came back with a major case of gas and/or constipation. God bless vacations and the inability to use the bathroom with ease because it isn't our own.

Saturday
... 9am Total Body Conditioning class? 2 miles on the treadmill starting at 10am? Breakfast? Yeah, right. We all lay abed until about 11 o' clock. I wake up just to take a phone call, and soaked in some warm morning rays on the balcony while chatting away. I come back inside -- Wong, Hong and the Chief are still sleeping. I crawl back into bed, too.

... I eat lunch in the Resort restaurant in a spa bathrobe, flip-flops, and nothing else. Interesting experience.

... after reconvening in the late afternoon, we decide to head out ... to Disney World. Ideally, we would have wanted to ride some rides at night, but it just wasn't worth it. So we brave the cold -- how does 35-degrees in South Florida sound to you? -- and stroll the Marketplace, picking up last-minute Christmas gifts, eating dinner at a chic-chic seafood place called Fulton's Crab House. You all must eat there. It is expensive, but utterly worth it.

... we continue to shiver and stroll through the park, stopping in at the Virgin Megastore (again, we could've stayed in the NY area for this, but why?) before hauling our aged, prematurely tired selves back to the car, and back to the Resort. Man, we are sleepy folks.

It was not an overly-packed weekend. In fact, the four of us did very little of anything. But for some reason, as always, it was totally fun, totally relaxing, totally worth the time and money. And, with most of the L.O.L.'s gathered in one location, it was a chance to plan our next vacation extravaganzas: sleepover and mama-kidnapping at KimKim's, Red Mountain revisited, Block Island when it's warm, Nantucket when it's cold, Boston to see the Chief's menagerie, and Tuscany when Hong buys her house there.