Our Get-Away (Day 1)

Last Tuesday, Kevin and I set our alarms for 1am.  We had packed our bags the night before, so we just had to make ourselves presentable and headed out the door and headed towards St. Louis's airport.  We are not frequent flyers.  In fact, this was just our third time to fly (the last time was when I was pregnant with Hayden).  We recieved an email days before our departure telling us to arrive two hours before the scheduled take off, which meant 4:25am.  I was a little nervous about getting where we were going, getting through expectedly long check in lines, figuring out parking, etc.  Kevin had researched the airports parking and knew which lot we wanted to park in.  We got turned around at the airport and maybe did 3 circles around terminal 2 trying to read signs (it was still dark outside).  Our fears of being late got the best of us, so we both agreed to just park at the lot closest to the terminal that we kept circling.  It happened to cost twice as much as the one we were looking for, but we were ok with that.

The lines that we expected to be out the doors were not.  We quickly checked our bags, immediately got through security, and found ourselves with over an hour to kill before it was time to board.  And then we both started regretting we parked in the lot we had parked in.  Too late to spend time thinking about what we should have done though.  We found a little bagel shop by our gate and ate breakfast.  I was definitely more nervous about flying (dying) than Kevin was, but our flight was pretty smooth.

We arrived in Tampa at 9:35am (they are an hour ahead of us).  This was our first time to ever rent a car but we had no problems.  Kevin convinced me to live it up and get a convertible and that's exactly what we did.  And it was so much fun!  I had joked it would probably be an old ugly model, but it was a 2016 mustang convertible!  The Enterprise employer said they trade cars every year they don't keep anything after a year.  Who knew?  

We had a short drive over to Clearwater.  We stopped at the first Walmart we saw and got sunscreen, a bucket and bleach for our shells, and bottles of water.  We wanted to find our condo and unpack, so that's what we did next.

Or condo was the upstairs of a small house.  We entered through a back staircase and it was nice, quiet, and private.  While there wasn't any view from our condo, the beach was literally steps away.

We were anxious to make the most of our time together.  We ate a quick lunch at Frenchys Cafe (not terrible, homemade chips were yum, but mostly fish on the menu).  Kevin ordered a buffalo grouper sandwich and I had a cheeseburger.

Then we went back to the condo, put on swim suits and walked down to the pier and looked for shells along the way.  It was 16 blocks from our condo, but it didn't seem that long walking along the water.  We were both feeling pretty tired once we got to the Pier and sat down... but it was only like 2 in the afternoon!  We decided to walk back to the condo but this time off the beach so we could check out the little shops on the strip.  It got hot quickly!  

We went back and got the car and took a 30 minute drive to Honeymoon Island to see what kind of shells we could find there.  I nodded off twice on the drive over but we found lots of neat shells and rocks that made the trip totally worth our while!  We also saw some big turtles on the side of the road... And a sign that said beware of rattlesnakes!

Exhaustion was setting in but we decided a dinner on the beach would be the perfect way to end our day.  We picked the first beach restaurant we came to, Palm Pavillion.  It was crowded, but it wasn't impressive.  The food was meh and I ordered a piña colada that was not drinkable.  We were seated in the direct sun on the patio and I should have asked to be moved, but I didn't.  There were pigeons on the floor (that Kevin kept feeding fries to), and seagulls that we're getting jealous of the pigeons and swooping in at our table.  We ordered chips and salsa as an appetizer and minutes after it was delivered to our table, our food came out (am I the only one that hates that?!). I ordered grilled chicken and red potatoes.  Kevin got a chicken wrap.  Our beautiful view + ok food + not so great service and a $40 tab... we knew we wouldn't be coming back!

We got back to the condo, put on our cozy plush Mom/Dad robes and sat and watched cable tv!  That was a treat since we don't normally see many of those shows :). Before we called it a night, we made some tentative plans for day 2!