It’s been awhile since my last post, but Jennifer supported my trip to Miami with the caveat that I had to make a contribution to the blog afterwards. It’s a small price to pay 🙂
I actually arranged vacation several months ago without giving a second thought to the BCS championship. And then Alabama won the SEC championship. I hadn’t been able to make the game in 2009 or 2011 due to work, so I definitely wanted to see this one. Of course, the tickets were running well over $1000 due to the Alabama – Notre Dame match-up. However, my brother and my friend Scott were both up for making the trip to Miami, tickets or not (Scott actually had a student ticket for med school reasons). Ben actually already had plane tickets to Birmingham for a wedding, so instead of making his return flight, he drove down with Scott (with a stop in Orlando to pick up Ben’s friend Linna). I booked a cheaper flight to West Palm Beach and timed it so I would arrive about the time Ben and Scott were driving through.
The trip was off to a rocky start after Ben and Scott missed the memo that I was arriving to West Palm. I spent at least 5 minutes on the phone with Scott before we figured out that they were an hour south at the Fort Lauderdale airport. We did manage to have time to grab a bite to eat and have an excellent margarita at Rocco’s Taco’s before turning in Sunday night.
We awoke on Gameday (Monday morning) bright and early at 9 am. Keep in mind that only Scott had a ticket at this point. The next few hours were spent perusing various online ticket sellers looking for a deal. Unfortunately, deals were in short supply, but despite this I managed to convince Ben and Linna to buy some tickets with me in the “cheap” seats. Next we drove out to Fort Lauderdale Beach before trekking to Sun Life stadium for the big event.
Fort Lauderdale Beach
Success!
Sun Life Stadium
Ben, Linna, and I before the game.
Roll Tide!!
After a fantastic game, we expected to be stuck in traffic forever on the way out. However, instead of waiting in line for all the other cars, we decided to find the back exit to the casino parking lot we were in. Along the way, we saw this sign:
Seems like a rather specific caution. After returning to the Westin, we spent a couple of hours watching ESPN before going to sleep. Needless to say, we had a late start the next day, but I spent good portion of it enjoying this view:
South Beach
On Wednesday, we got up at about 2:30 am to begin the drive home. I volunteered to take the first shift as I’m most accustomed to being up at all hours of the night. We dropped Linna off at the West Palm airport before Ben and I continued our journey to Dothan. Scott was on his way to New Orleans for a pediatrics interview, so fortunately we didn’t have to go too far out of the way. All in all, an excellent road trip! The only thing missing was Jennifer.
