When I was real young, I remember taking a trip to a place called "Sanibel Island", off the west coast of Florida, with my parents and grandparents.  Being only about 10 years old at the time, I can't say I remember a lot of specifics about the whole vacation - other than things a kid would remember: trapping a chameleon in an empty 2 liter coke bottle and insisting I could take it home, remembering the 'in the floor' aquarium that was in our condo, and basically remembering beautiful scenery.  Ever since I went when I was little, I had always said, "One day I'll go back there".  Oddly enough, it was never high up on my list of places to visit, because I try hard to get to a different destination for each vacation.

This past September, (1999), armed with a $200 buck airline credit, a 4 day weekend, and no destination in mind, I rolled around the idea of Sanibel again.  My husband had never been, and sounded a bit intrigued about the area - besides, he loves Florida.  After much planning and deciding on when and where, we decided that Sanibel would be our main destination over the 3 day (which we would stretch into almost 5) holiday weekend.  Since the airline we had our credit with didn't fly into Ft. Myers, we decided to fly into Tampa, rent a car, and drive the 2 hours along the coast.  We also planned to spend the first night (friday) in Tampa, so that we could visit Busch Gardens the next day.  Also, we decided to stop off on a few side trips during drive down and back - Sarasota on the way down, (to see St. Armand's Circle) and then Naples, south of Sanibel, later in the week.

We arrived in Tampa around 11:00pm on Friday night, and headed right over to the Tampa Hilton for our one night stay.  It was a nice, quiet hotel, about 10 minutes away from the airport.  Very clean, and a nice room with a king bed.  No complaints.  The next morning we took the hotel shuttle back to the airport, and picked up our rental car.  Just a forewarning on rental cars in Florida.  Not only is it almost imperative to make a reservation if you want a compact or sub-compact rental car, but there are 5 separate taxes on rental cars, that end up making your total tax percentage around 30%!!!  We rented a brand new Chevy Cavalier (considered compact class) for $110.00 for 4 days - okay, this sounds cheap - BUT after taxes, we ended up spending about 145 bucks!!  We used Budget Rental Cars, directly out of the airport, and they were easy and pleasant to deal with.   After we picked up our car, we were off to Busch Gardens!!  We left around 8 in the morning, the park was only about a 20 min drive from the airport.

We spent the day at the theme park, neither of us had ever been - Busch Gardens has the added benefit of a very nice Zoo, all included in the price.  No surprise to me, but we spent the majority of the day in the zoo area, taking photographs of the animals.  We ended the day over with the amusement rides, riding the water rapids ride, and a few coasters.  We left the park around 4:00, because we had a 2 hour drive ahead of us, and wanted to stop off in Sarasota for dinner.  You can see a selection of my photos from the Busch Gardens Zoo.

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Day 2 Busch Gardens & Sarasota

Day 3 The Resort & Sanibel

Day 4 Naples & Lover's Key State Park

Day 5 Edison House & Home