Monday, September 5, 2011

Tallahassee: Gators, Po' Boys, FSU and the Dance Band on the Titanic



   Although we had been to Florida a lot, we had never been to Tallahassee.  Our son is now a graduate student in Religion, Ethics & Philosophy at Florida State University.  Our daughter-in-law is teaching in the French Department at FSU while completing her PhD Dissertation in French Literature at Emory University.   They moved from Atlanta to Tallahassee in early August.  We were anxious to check out their new surroundings and explore Tallahassee.
  We arrived late on Friday, Sept. 2 (http://tomcarrico.blogspot.com/2011/09/its-long-long-way-to-tallahassee.html).  We went to their new apartment in the Southwood area and were amazed at how organized, unpacked and settled in they already are!  We drove about 45 minutes to the south to Wakulla Springs(http://www.floridastateparks.org/wakullasprings/).  This is a river which is fed by a large underground spring which is part of a 300 mile under gound cistern system of caves.  There is an interesting lodge there and a public park with a beach.  We took a boat tour of the river and saw quite an abundant wildlife population, including gators, manatees, birds, spiders and fish.

   We ate at a wonderful Greek/Lebanese restaurant where we tried a bit of everything, including four different types of baklava!  After dinner we pillaged the local Borders Bookstore which is closing and everything was 70-80% off.

   Sunday we dodged rain showers from Tropical Storm Lee all day.  Tommy and Abbey gave us a great tour of the FSU campus (we avoided the campus on Saturday because there was a home football game).  We ate at Po' Boy's, a Cajun, New Orleans style restaurant (http://poboys.com/).  We toured the Mary Brogan Museum of Art (http://www.thebrogan.org/) where we saw a traveling  artifact exhibit from the Titanic.  We were each given a ticket with a passenger name and at the end of the exhibit we could look up and see if we survived.  Ellen was the only one of the four of us that survived.  I, however, was the leader of the dance band!  So, I died but apparently was a great musician.

  We went to the IMAX theater and saw a terrific movie on the Galapagos Islands.
  We finished the evening at a Tallahassee landmark: Momo's Pizza (http://momospizza.com/) where their motto is "Slices as big as your head" which is, in fact, true.
   Monday we visited a bit more, said our good-bye's and will depart for Lynchburg this afternoon.
  We had a great visit with our kids and are glad to see them so happily settled in their new home.  We learned a bit about Tallahassee, which is much different from other places we have been in Florida (a possible retirement destination?).

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