We met friends at the Tommy Bahama's Tropical Café in the old retail store on the Circle, and said to be a great favorite of local resident Jerry Springer. We had blackened fish tacos ($14, and really tasty), with plantains and coconut dipping sauce. For dessert, piña colada cake is a killer choice, and it's big enough to share.

MORE DIVERSIONS

And so it went. We had a merry couple of days of knocking around Sarasota. Charlotte planned the itinerary so I wouldn't have to listen to her moan if I chose a lame activity. Her picks included Mote Marine Aquarium, home to a 135,000-gallon shark tank, plus one of our old favorites, Myakka River State Park. We'd visited this terrific park when Char was a toddler, and remembered airboat rides on Gator Gal and extremely large alligators.

Now, the park has a cool new feature, the Myakka Canopy Walkway. A stroll on this 25-foot-high suspension bridge gives you a turkey vulture's eye view of the park. Way cool, we agreed. And those same gators seem to be in residence, bigger than ever.

Much as I appreciate my daughter's animal-loving, outdoorsy side, she is also a college student, on a bare-bones budget. With this in mind, I treated her to her first facial, at our hotel's Island House Spa.

Afterwards, we celebrated with goat cheese-and-arugula pizza (very un-Dominoes!) at Portofino Ristorante. Since eating out is a rare treat for us lately, we savored the experience.

On our final night, we enjoyed the ultimate indulgence: eating a big bag of M&Ms in bed while watching What Not to Wear.

''What do you suppose the boys are doing right now?'' I asked Charlotte. ''Making loud farting noises while watching a Bruce Willis movie,'' she answered, without missing a beat.

Here's to living large (and guy-free) in Sarasota, if only for the weekend!

MOTHERLY ADVICE

Now that I'm a veteran of yet another mom-daughter getaway, I have some tips to make it more fun. (And don't moms love to give advice!)

• Plan in advance -- and then some. Take advantage of random school vacations (post-exam break is perfect) to steal her away. Book her early, before some classmate invites her to a beach house on the Keys for the weekend.

• Keep your final destination a surprise. Just say it's ''someplace fun'' -- that gives you lots of latitude to find a good deal. Plus, even big kids love surprises. I always start with the hotel, since ''sweet digs'' are something that neither my daughter nor I can resist. We're happy to dine on tuna from a can if it means we can stay in a hotel with a marble bathroom, fluffy robes and a view of the pool.

• Plan to stay up late and sleep in late, if you want to be conscious at the same time as your child. Kids are nocturnal, so you might as well go with it.

• Don't tie yourself to an itinerary. If you end up stressed out because the boat is leaving or the museum is closing, you'll miss the point of this -- to relax and enjoy each other's company.

• Easy does it on the hardcore bonding. Don't view this as the chance to find out what she wants to do with her life, if she's smoked any dope while in college, and so on. Skip the questions and simply enjoy the wonderful, unique creature you brought into this world. You may be surprised at what she'll share while you're watching the sun set or giving each other a pedicure.

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