This was a winter get away for my husband and I. Being that we live in Michigan we like to cruise Jan/Feb. I did take some pics but not enough to post. If you have any specific questions please let me know.

Saturday Jaurary 29th 2011 Myself 56 and DH 61 headed to the airport around 6:30am for Delta flight that left Detroit at 8:40am headed for Tampa. I had pre printed boarding passes along with purchasing one checked bag on line, saved $2 yippee!! Once at the gate we checked if the flight was full, hoping to take a bump but no luck. Flight boarded at 8am. The flight was about 2 hours and this plane had little monitors in the backs of the seats so got to watch CNN, Food network along with many other show. Just need your own earbuds or you can purchase. I had mine from my I pod so worked well. We were served drink/snack en route. Landed in Tampa early at 11:15am. Proceeded to pick up bags and then walked across the street to rental car area. I had pre booked a two day rental thru Dollar for $55.47 with AAA discount, about $20 less than competitors. We were given a Chevy Malibu (midsize). I had brought our Garmin GPS from home, so plugged in address and we were on our way. It was sort of neat driving over the Sunshine Skyway bridge realizing we would be passing under it in just a few days. Around 1pm we stoppyed at Applebee's in Bradenton-this location offered half off appetizers and 2 for one drinks if you ate at the bar. My DH and I split the Chicken Wontons, Boneless Chicken wings and Spinach Artichoke dip-all excellent. We had 2 for 1 beers (pints), 2 each and our bill came to $16. Amy at the bar was wonderful. With full bellies we continued on our way. We arrived in Marco Island at 3:30pm-had a great visit with our friend a former Michigander whom we used to boat with. Around 7pm we headed out for dinner. We went to Cocomo's in town. All of us had some sort of grouper dinner-2 blackened and 1 grouper francaise-it had capers, white wine, scallions but lacked taste. Entrees were about $20. Beer special at $1.99 for a pint. Headed back to our home for the next couple of days. Visited for a while and then off to bed

Sunday January 23, 2011. Up around 7am. Relaxed as we drank coffee and planned our day. Our host was very familiar with Marco Island so around 11am took us on a tour of the island. Many beautiful homes-even got to see Shania Twain's house which is currently up for sale. We were getting hungry and decided on stopping at Stan's in Goodland. I had read quite a bit about it on Trip Advisor. It is only open on Sunday. The weather was getting nice (now 60 and sunny) so we chose a table outside. Mixed drinks aren't cheap for the size at $7, beers were $4. We ordered chicken strip basket $9 with fries and slaw, DH had clam chowder $4 (he said it was so so) We people watched while having lunch. Many bikers stop here. On site is a boutique-jewelery, clothes, trinkets. There also is a fresh produce market. We didn't see Stan during our visit. The do have a live band which was just setting up around 1pm. From Stan's we drove to Alligator Alley and Everglade city. We turned down one road and saw may gators. Our friend told us that in warm weather there would be gators all up and down the road. The ones we saw were all in the swamp area. From there we headed back to Marco to put our dinner in the oven. About 4p we headed to the beach on the gulf shore. It was quite windy but still sunny. It felt great to us Michiganders. We walked a few miles and collected a variety of shells and some of the pure white sugar sand. Stopped at Winn Dixie on the way back to pick up some items for dinner and our two bottles of wine to take on board (750ml per bottle). After a wonderful dinner we got our suitcases in order. We put our cruise tags on our cases-I had covered the tags with clear stapping tape, punched a hole in each end then secured with snall zip ties. We programed the airport address into the Garmin ready for our return trip in the AM. Read more