On Sunday, February 1, the first morning of our trip, Guy and I awoke and decked ourselves out in Steelers gear to get ready for the big game. In order to make it from Orlando to Tampa, we had to follow a complicated route from the hotel to a theme park to a boat to a hotel to pick up our rental car, but before that, we fueled up with breakfast at Boatwright's, the table-service restaurant at Port Orleans Riverside.
I ordered scrambled eggs, bacon, and French toast, and Guy got something equally as breakfasty. It was good, except the eggs were a little watery, but the French toast was really great. It was actually deep-fried, which we all know makes things all the more tasty. Our waiter was a nice young man named "Michael" from "Bogota, Columbia," otherwise known as Joseph from Tennessee who forgot his name tag and was forced to wear someone else's. I'm glad we asked him why he had a Southern accent - otherwise we would have been permanently confused.
After breakfast, we eventually made it to the Alamo rental counter at the Dolphin hotel. We rented some sort of Pontiac clunker and headed on down to Tampa. We gave ourselves a lot of time to travel in case of traffic, but we ended up getting there without a hitch (minus a bathroom break for my coffee-loving husband), so we had TONS of time to kill once we arrived.
We found a spot in our prepaid Green parking lot, making sure to carefully note the location of where our car was (didn't actually do this -- oops). My extreme paranoia towards losing our $800 tickets led me to purchase two souvenir ticket holders from some dude on the sidewalk, and it ended up that we got scammed -- 30 feet down the road there was a guy selling them for $5 less apiece, but what's 10 bucks when you've already spent almost 2,000? With our tickets now safely around our necks, we entered through the security lines and went on for a short time to explore the NFL Experience.
There wasn't a ton to do there aside from taking pictures with beheaded NFL uniforms, so we bought a $7 hot dog, $8 cheeseburger, and $5 bottle of water and popped a squat on the curb until the stadium opened. We were definitely surprised and excited to see the ratio of Steelers fans to Cardinals fans outside the stadium, but once we got in, the Cardinals fans somehow seemed to appear out of nowhere (or maybe the red stadium seats were tricking my eyes).
Bridgestone provided us with some nice seat cushion souvenirs, and after more expensive food and more waiting, the game was finally about to begin! We befriended two older ladies sitting behind us who were from Moon, and the two ladies next to us, who were from Squirrel Hill.
Even though we were in the "cheap seats," our view was pretty good. We were sitting in row A, though, so we were right at the top of the stairs, and every time someone was returning to or leaving their seats, they seemed to want to stop right on the stairs, right in front of us. I almost fought a multitude of people that night trying to get them out of our way. I'm sure my big hulk of a husband would have backed me up, though, right, Guy? ;)
It was pretty exciting to be at the game, cheering on the Steelers, surrounded by tons of other Steeler fans, but I was also amazed at the number of people there who were wearing other teams' NFL jerseys or not wearing any kind of sports apparel at all. Why would you spend that much money to go to the game when you don't even care about the outcome? I guess that helps to explain why they were in and out of their seats so much, but jeez.
I won't go into the highlights of the game because that's all history, but I will say that I'm happy I was there for history being made. I can't wait to watch the game on DVD and hear what the announcers were saying the whole time.
There's so much more to say about the halftime show, being accosted by "Holy Rollers" after leaving the stadium, and sleeping in the parking garage till traffic died down, but this is a novel already, so I'll just let the pictures say the rest.
Clicky
Day Three still to come.
1 comment:
The double ick comment filled me with enough rage for 1000 years. I was going to slam your husband for not putting his arm around you, fa Gad's sake. But now, you're on my S list.
I can't wait until the Bills win their 7th Superbowl because when they do, I will be sure to hunt you down and show you my hands. One hand will have 6 fingers representing the 6 awesome Superbowls the Bills have won. The other hand will have 1 special finger ready for your viewing pleasure.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
FYI - I saw Guy dance at work today to a Jonas Brothers song. He didn't think anyone was watching as he writhed around the data center. But he forgot we have a camera. High comedy.
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