I went to the Techmentor Conference last week.  It was pretty cool, but I don't think I will ever go to Orlando again without the boys in tow.  Steph came with me and hung out at the hotel all week, getting a well-deserved break from being a mom. It was fun, relaxing, and a nice change of pace. Warning - The full article is pretty long... 

 

The Departure 

Last Thursday, we left Winston to head down to Myrtle beach where we met my parents at the house in Surfside Beach. They took the boys for the week while we were gone.  We rented a Jeep Liberty, which I didn't like as much as I thought I would, and found out about thirty minutes into the drive that the cigarette lighter power plug didn't work. Of course, with two cell phones, a GPS, and various other electronic devices packed into the car, that wasn't going to fly.  We needed power. I figured it was probably a blown fuse, so I started looking for the owner's manual the next time I pulled over.  Frantic searching through the glove box, under the seats, and in all of the usual places turned up nothing, so I decided to take a detour to the Charleston airport and swap out the car.  I'm so glad I did.  We ended up getting a Saturn Vue, which we loved. With our gadgets powered up, we hopped back on the highway and headed toward Savannah.

Savannah, GA 

We expected to spend some time looking for our motel and getting settled once we got to Savannah, but our motel, the Thunderbird Inn, was right off the highway.  We couldn't have missed it if we had tried. This motel is a an old motor inn that has been remodeled with a retro theme, so it has the look of a classic motel, but it was quite comfortable.  It even had wireless access and free continental breakfast! It took us a short time to get checked in once they figured out our reservation was under a misspelled name and soon we were hitting the town, so to speak.  Our plan was to head over to The Lady and Sons for a nice southern supper, but the place was already booked for the night by 6:30.  I've heard it's impossible to get in on the weekends, but weekdays aren't so bad.  We weren't too disappointed, though, because southern comfort food is not really our favorite, so we strolled around until we spotted  Jazz'd Tapas Bar.  This turned out to be a fantastic find.  They had lots of different Tapas on the menu and a couples combo called Tapas for Two that we ordered.  We got a choice of four Tapas, salad or soup, and dessert for the price, which was well worth it.  All of the tapas were good and the salad and dessert were equally good.  I'd recommend the place if you ever make it down to Savannah. After dinner, we walked around the city and checked out the River walk.  We were talked to by a homeless man from Asheboro, NC for a little while as well.  We mostly nodded at his incomprehensible dialog and then went our separate ways. Overall, Savannah was pretty.  There was plenty of Spanish moss hanging from oak trees and the city itself had a very historic southern feel.  The next morning, we drove around and took some pictures, then hit the road again.

St. Augustine, FL

As it got closer and closer to lunch time, we started eying the map for prospective places to settle on our haunches and get our grub on. In our initial planning, it looked like we would be somewhere near Palm Coast, FL at lunch time, but as it tuned out, we were ahead of schedule and we were very close to St. Augustine.  A woman I used to work with had told me countless times how great St. Augustine was, so I decided to give it a shot.  I'm glad I did. We drove straight in to the Visitor's Center and walked down to the historic waterfront.  We were immediately surprised by the old stone fort right on the waterfront. It was apparently a Spanish fort built when the Spaniards and the British were battling it out for Florida.  Very cool. Further down the street was the Bridge of Lions, which goes across the Matanzas Bay inlet to the island across the water and at the intersection of roads there, we ate at A1A Aleworks. We had a great beer cheese soup there with molasses bread to dip in it.  For entrees, we both got fish dishes.  Mine was a tilapia with some sort of creamy jalapeño sauce.  Steph's was good, too, but I forgot what it was.  After lunch, we walked around St. Augustine and gawked at the old Spanish architecture.  The city was lovely and some of the old buildings were incredible to look at.  In the midst of all of this historical beauty was Flagler College. This would be a nice place to go to school. Reluctantly, we left St. Augustine after a  two hour self-tour of the city.  We hopped back into the Vue and headed south again.

Destination - Orlando 

We rolled into Orlando at about 4:40 and found the Hilton without much trouble. It is located across the street from the entrance to Downtown Disney, which is a blessing and a curse. It meant there was a lot of shopping and dining immediately accessible, but it was all at premium prices. Ouch. Here's a picture of the hotel

It was pretty nice, but it could have been better.  There was an Italian restaurant there with some great food, but the internet connection in the room sucked.  There were also two pools and two hot tubs to keep us busy when we just wanted to hang out at the hotel, which is what we opted to do for most of the week when I wasn't in class. The conference itself was pretty good.  I learned a lot of new scripting stuff and had a good time doing it.  It was one of the smaller conferences I've been to and I don't know if I would go back or not, though.  I might try something like Developer.NET next time. The week went pretty quickly, but we were ready to go by the time Saturday morning rolled around.  It wasn't quite as nice as the trip down because we weren't stopping halfway on the way home, so it was a long drive back to Surfside Beach and then a long drive back from Surfside Beach to Winston-Salem.  Luckily, the time between those two trips was spent with Mom and Dad and the boys, who met us there at the beach house. At the end of it all, Steph wished she had brought Gabriel and maybe Colby down with her and I was glad I hadn't missed their first trip to Disney World.