I’m not going to even talk about the game. I’ve already moved on, it’s time to play Tulsa. However, I did want to give my report from the weekend because we had a great time overall. Regardless of what happens on the field I truly hope this series continues, if anything just because its great to have a road game so close!

So here’s my report on everything from the hotel to the places we ate, to of course the tailgate. If you don’t care about that stuff, then don’t read on…

Hotel: Hotel Quorum
We had a nice size crew from my family and we were joined by my friend Mike and his family. We stayed at Hotel Quorum which is a 3* hotel that we pricelined for $78 a night when rooms were going for $150. It was a pretty good hotel. Close to Raymond James, nice, clean, and we got free drink coupons for the hotel bar. The Sheraton Suites right down the block was better in my opinion, but I’m a big Starwood guy so I’m biased.

Friday Night: Champps and Bar Louie
We really had a good experience at Champps in International Plaza area for dinner. It’s a giant sports bar with lots of TVs like you would expect, however I was impressed with the menu its more than you’d expect from a regular old sports bar. Although there weren’t many when we got there, there ended up being a decent number of UCF fans there. I counted about 40 people at tables which had UCF fans. We did some black and gold chanting, and most importantly a UCF fan got the manager to represent UCF on the window with college logos. There was a FSU, UF, UM, and USF logo but no UCF logo however a Knights fan spoke to the manager and next thing you know he drew a UCF logo on a sheet of paper and posted it to loud cheers from the black and gold fans.

After the game a few of us walked over to Bar Louie. This was a pretty cool spot. Most important they had lots of beers on draft, so you can’t go wrong with that. Although I was pretty disappointed with the pumpkin ale they had, but you can’t blame the bar on that one. Left early as we had a early wake up call for tailgating.

Saturday Morning: Tailgate Time
We left the hotel about 7:45am and stopped at Sweetbay grocery to load up on food. There were a ton of UCF fans in there as well as some USF fans. Lot to lot 8 shortly after 8:15am and it pretty much looked like a UCF home game with tons of Knight fans, by far the majority. Got out area all setup then strolled around and talked to other friends. We did a breakfast tailgate with French Toast, sausage, scrambled eggs, potato casserole, and other goodies. Played a fun game of asking USF fans who their starting QB was two years ago, hardly any knew. One girl had a funny response saying “I don’t know I just jumped on the bandwagon” well you gotta like the honesty. After some music, beer, and cornhole games we packed up the tailgate at 11am and headed for the stadium. Lots of cheering, jeering, chanting, and good natured ribbing all the way from the car to our seats. It was a great atmosphere to watch a game at for the first two quarters at least. Also I have to say outside of two small issues, we didn’t have any major problems with USF fans. No one talked to us, but no one gave us a hard time.

Saturday Night: The Lime and Four Green Fields
Got some recommendations for this Mexican/Brazilian restaurant called The Lime so we decided to check it out. Although it was a bit more trendy that I expected, I’m glad we did, the food was just absolutely incredible. We started with some loaded nachos and a separate order of queso, both were awesome and I’m a huge queso guy…I think this place has my favorite of anywhere outside of San Antonio. They also make some pretty good mojitos. For dinner I personally got a the grilled skirt steak chimichanga and it was out of this world. There is no doubt that when I come back for the USF/UCF basketball game in Tampa I will be coming back to this place!

After dinner those of us that didn’t have kids went over to an Irish pub a few miles away called Four Green Fields. It was a neat little place that had live Irish music. It wasn’t very crowded at all, but that actually worked out for us because we can easily have a conversation or listen to the musician. We had a good time, although I’d take Fiddlers in Orlando over this place any day.

Sunday: The Drive Home (Fantasy of Flight)
Not in any hurry to get back we stopped at a couple of places. First we stopped at Hard Rock Casino and Hotel. Honestly I wasn’t too impressed with the place. All they are allowed to run are poker tables and slots. We blew through $30 at the slots in a matter of minutes, walked around and then got out of there. Then my wife insisted that we stop at Dinosaur World, not to attend but so she can get her picture with one of the big Dinos. Mission accomplished, in and out and back on I-4. Our next stop was Fantasy of Flight, where we met up with some others in my family to check this place out as we had free passes. I wasn’t too thrilled about coming here and was going to even skip it, but I’m glad I didn’t. This place blew away my expectations and I’m not a big plane guy or anything. Their museum was absolutely beautiful and did a great job of bringing you back to the period on display. I’d say it that was worth the price of admission alone. However there is much more as they have hangars full of old planes on display, free simulators, and tons of guided tours. Most of the guided tours were over when we got there, except for the tram tour. It was cool because you got to learn about how they restore planes, the engines they run on, and info about the billionaire that owns the place and uses it as his personal playground. We were there 2.5 hours and then had to leave because it was closing, but we easily could have spent much more time there. I highly recommend it, I believe tickets are just $18 or so. After a brief stop at the always tasty Wildsides BBQ in beautiful downtown Orlando, we were back home after a great weekend.

Here are our pictures from the tailgate