My trip to Tampa, Florida! Part two

The next morning we continued our trip by heading over to UT, University of Tampa. What can I say other than UT is old, beautiful and historical. It's rustic beauty was clearly breath taking for everyone on the trip. We kept gasping at the marvel that UT offered. Everything looked so official and well... private. This university was a great educational contrast showing what an older, more established private university looked and felt like to a more modern and liberal educational institution.

 What UT showed in great beauty it severely lacked in friendly warmth and personality. The people were cold and no one asked us for a tour of their campus or gave us any good insight. The few good samaritans were the museum coordinator who let us in -when we gave our little donation despite that amount not adding up even close to what we had to pay originally-. Another was a guy one of my club mates stopped to chat with; who was friendly but also seemed weird because he was responding as if he was being very forceful and fake in his interactions. When my club mate tried to peer into one of the buildings people inside stared at him strangely.

When he was waiting to be buzzed into the building no one came to open the door. The guy that my club mate stopped immediately had the door open for him. I won't say UT is prejudice, we hadn't spend much time there to give a true assessment, but I will say they aren't as friendly as USF students which was one of the stark difference from both campus. Another difference was that the campus students weren't diverse. That was an aspect I did not like at all. Almost every student we saw were white, no Asians, no Africans, no Middle Easterners, just European white. Not my taste at all.

My final opinion of the University of Tampa wasn't much since I came to the conclusion that UT is beautiful and people should come to see the lovely architecture both inside and outside the buildings, the interesting paintings and furnishings and the historical hotel that was turned into a museum in the same building as admissions. But come for sight seeing, nothing else. The students are a turn off so much so that I could never see myself living on campus much less going to classes there. The guys seem like a bunch of juice heads with a huge amount of testosterone and probably was in some stuck up rich little society or fraternity. I must include that the women there was a lot more nicer and relaxed with our presence, so I do not want to down cast such a side eye at them as I do the guys. Overall the interesting building design and the museum was a highlight of the campus, as sad as it is to say. Everything was closed, from the admission office to financial aid, so there were no one there to ask any questions about the campus.

We headed back into the van, people slept while our adviser drove around. We headed to a skating ring, where our adviser told us we could skate, rock climb, play laser tag etc. There was all types of activities she said. We were ready for some more fun activities so we was all for it. I wanted to skate, play laser and rock climb, heck I would probably do everything they had. We all was pumped.

We got there and our hopes fell as quickly as they came. This place was in a weird seedy neighborhood and it was already packed in the parking lot. Still intent on having fun we trail our way to the doors as our adviser rummaged around in the van. I came in and was blown away and not in a good way. The place was rancid and run down. Eww. I can only imagine the amount of vermin they had crawling around if we would have stayed longer.

 I was not the least bit impressed. There, was everything laid out in front of us. The majority of us stayed by the door gaping for our breath. Seriously, is this the type of place we will be spending our evening? I gazed around looking from the games tuck in the corners to the dilapidated skating ring to the ringy dink wall climbing station to my right. The place was off kilter and everything felt wrong. There were no one at the front desk but there was an overweight lady squawking commands in a mike on the skating ring. Everything looked busy in a not so nice nauseating way.

I headed back to the van since the building was fairly warm so I did not need my sweater any more, nor my purse. I knew I wasn't going to buy any food there anyway. Soon after everyone came piling back to the van. Someone finally came up to them to tell them that the place was closing at three thirty and the skating ring will be open back at seven. We shudder in horror at what this place might look like while at night. Our adviser told us to get back in the van because we weren't coming back in this crummy place late at night.

I was a little disappointed, despite the creepy atmosphere I did want to rock climb and fall on my butt skating. We continue on our way through Tampa. Our Adviser and our club president tried diligently to find a place for us to hang out and have fun. Earlier in the day, before we had set off, our adviser asked us if we wanted to race drive. We excitingly screamed yes in unison, so after the big fail going skating was we headed to the race car driving destination. After a few miles driving we decided to just see how race driving would be and go from there.

We found this jewel among us in Tampa. I do not recall the name of this place but I do remember it was a fun two building arcade palace. We headed into the first building closest to us. Bingo we hit the lottery because one of the race car operators gave us a delicious deal we couldn't refuse. We all scrambled in line at our discounted price. I paid nothing since another club mate had change and paid for the rest of us.

Can I just say that race car driving is so for me!!! Okay maybe that wasn't correct English but I had to say it. The rush of driving down the bends and curves of the track was way better than I expected. I was even better at driving than I expected. Our discount man had us go around the track five times, even though on the sign we were only suppose to go around two times. When we were headed to leave we even got three free turns back on the track. Thank you discount man!! Maybe he thought one of the girls in our group was cute. Wink, wink.

I will note that the arcades were noticeably built for small kids in mind. Aside from the car racing, and batting cage unless someone in our group was a fanatic arcade game player, there wasn't much for a group of nineteen to thirty two year old to do. I wanted to go on the bungee cord. But to my amazement you have to be under a hundred and twenty five pounds. I am currently a hundred and fifty pounds, let's just say you can honestly assume that my hopes were dashed. While outside waiting for the other club members as they waited for their turn on the bungee I came to a conclusion.

The only people lined up for bungee jumping was little kids. From ages as low as two and as old as ten, oh and my group who are nineteen and twenty year old women but could pass for fourteen year olds. Haha. My adviser were going to go on the bungee but last minute decided to skip it, she, herself looked about fifteen or sixteen at most. Ha. I didn't feel so frustrated after all, the bungee was created for little kids. In fact the whole park seem to be a kid's one big paradise of fun and games. Cool for them.

While returning from a bathroom break, I had one of my roommates quit on the tedious long line and ask for me to go into the arcade with her. I accepted the offer and turned to head into the aracade. We played games for fifteen minutes until some of our group members came in and got us. This is when I was told that we could go back to the race driving track and get a couple free turns. I was all for it!!! We headed back and everything proved the race driving was the best for us to spend our time. I'm a freak for speed!!