Florida: Day 4

There will be more pictures in a few days. I'm a huge twerp and I left my camera's cable in Utah. I have a ton of pictures on my memory stick but no way to get them on the Internet yet. I suck! But anyway...

This morning, my dad and Jake and I took Camille to St. Armand's Circle 

to have breakfast at the Blue Dolphin.

This place is seriously awesome. There is always a 10+ minute wait, and everyone will always wait it. It's that yummy. If you ever visit Sarasota, you must go partake of the breakfast tastiness that is the Blue Dolphin on St. Armand's.

After we stuffed ourselves full of deliciousness, we went to the Mote Marine Aquarium, which is on the other end of Lido Key.

At Mote, we checked out all kinds of tank displays that featured native Florida species, and also the giant dead squid they have sitting in a vat of formaldehyde. We got stared at by some fiskies and I saw a couple of mermaids. Serious.

Mermaid!

Gross!

We spent a looooong time at Mote, and by the time we were done, Camille was a crankmonster. We went home, put her down for a nap, and when she woke up, we drove to Clearwater and ate scrumptious Persian food.

Oh yeah, it's the Persian New Year (Noruz/Nowruz/Norouz).

They (being Persians) celebrate their New Year on the Spring Equinox, which makes a lot more sense than January 1st, in my opinion. It also means their New Year is on a different day every year, and that depending on what time zone you live in, you celebrate it at a different time every year (but everyone around the world celebrates it all together at the same moment!). It's a throwback to Zoroastrian religious practices, so as you can guess, the Ayatollah doesn't like it very much.

But who gives a fuck what the Ayatollah thinks, anyway!!

The Wednesday before Noruz is called Chaharshanbeh Suri. Chaharshanbeh is simply the word for Wednesday, and Suri means red (that's right, Suri Cruise's name means "red," not "princess" or whatever Tom and Katie thought it meant). Chaharshanbeh Suri is composed of many different rituals that are symbolic in casting off the old year and welcoming the new, but nothing gay like making resolutions. Iranians are serious business about their New Year.

They light shit on FIRE!

Not only do they set things to burning, but they then jump through the flames. It's a symbolic (and sometimes literal) "burning" away of the baggage of the previous year and cleansing yourself for the new year. So last Wednesday, every Iranian you know was hurling themselves over a pit of fire. What did you do last Wednesday? Watch Bridezillas? Yeah, that's what I thought.

OK, that's enough info about Persian holidays. My point was, we went to the Persian restaurant, I crammed my gullet full of kubideh and baba ganouge, and every time another Iranian would enter the restaurant, they would greet the owner with "Happy New Year!" (in Farsi of course). And they all thought Camille was adorable, and she communicated her delight by yelling at them and barfing on Jake.

It was a magical evening.