Salt In My Hair Love In The Air

Where to begin? How about at the beginning? I mostly record these sorts of trip memories for my own benefit, and fully admit they feel a little bit like inviting someone in to watch my vacation slides. 

I mean honestly I would totally come view your vacation slides if invited so...come on in...

Hubs and I were invited to a wedding on July 4th. In Florida. Yes it was hot. It was also hot in South Carolina, but there we'd have been in our swim suits, not wedding clothes. 

We have a hard and fast rule that we are not away from the lake on the 4th of July, but we made an exception this year. The bride's parents are some of our oldest and dearest friends and we've known the bride since the day she was born. She and my daughter2 are the same age and spent their earliest years together in NJ, and then in a fun twist of geography, ended up graduating from high school together in the UK. 

Daughter2 wasn't able to attend the wedding, but we talked about her-ha! Hi Daughter2! 

Since we were trekking to Florida in July we decided to tack a couple of days on to the trip and have a little bit of beach time. The wedding was in Tampa, which is not the beach, so we opted to stay in St. Petersburg about a half hour away. 

We stayed in the Don Cesar Beach House Suites which are pink like the Don Cesar, but more apartment-like. We had a sitting room, kitchenette, bedroom and two bathrooms, plus a balcony overlooking the pool and out to the beach. 

You have all the benefits of the Don in terms of dining, the spa, the pools, etc. and are just a short walk down the beach to the main hotel. 

If you're not familiar with the Don she's a beauty. The Don Cesar is known as the pink hotel and is castle like in appearance. It was built in 1928 and has hosted many a celebrity, politician, and famous sort of guest for decades. 

It's beautiful inside and out and is a landmark in St. Pete. 

Our location had a great pool and fabulous beach so while we did have a couple of lunches at the main hotel, and I had my hair done there on wedding day, and we did do a lot  some shopping in their very lovely shops, we mostly just hung out at our location.  

There was a cabana boy who set up chairs and umbrellas every day, and the private beach wasn't crowded. The cabana boy actually worked at a club on our lake very recently which was a fun discovery, so we talked all things lake and Clemson sports with him. 

The trip began with the long drive down to Florida on Wednesday. We like a car trip and didn't want to be dealing with the airport nonsense on a holiday weekend. We started listening to our 40-hour book The Last Lion (Volume 1) and there's a prologue and an introduction and three hours in we finally got to chapter one. Whew! This is the life and times of Winston Churchill and really really good, but there are three volumes in the series, all equally as long, so it will be quite a while before I do an actual review. 

We stopped for breakfast/lunch in the little town of Bowman Georgia at a place called Bowman House which featured southern cooking. It was full of locals which we always take as a good sign. 

The drive took about nine hours with stops, but we had no hiccups which was nice. We'd dropped the dog off at the kennel that morning and put Waze on, which had us avoiding the interstate we'd normally jump on very close to the kennel. Thankfully we listened to Waze because we learned later the interstate was completely shut down both directions all day and overnight too due to a spill. 

See, this is why my recaps are so long. I feel the need to explain why we took route B instead of route A. Likewise I think this post will be a part B and part A. 

We got checked in to the hotel then walked out on the beach to see what we could see. Standing in front of the ocean never gets old. 

We went down to Passe Grille for dinner at a place called The Hurricane. Our plan was to eat fresh Grouper every single day and I think we almost managed that. Passe Grille is a little beach town at the southern end of St. Petersburg, and our hotel was less than five miles away. We shared some peel and eat shrimp too which is another favorite of mine. 

After dinner we watched the sun set. 

It's a whole thing on the Gulf y'all and it is not to be missed. When our girls were young we vacationed on the Gulf and we used to tell them the sun was going to bed and they thought we worked some kind of magic to make it drop into the sea just as we said good night. 

Thursday the plan was the beach. 

That's it. The whole plan. 

We spent most of the day on the beach, then moved up to the pool which was beside the beach and also very lovely. 

We did walk a few steps down the beach for lunch at the Don Cesar beside their pool which was also nice. I had the most delicious blackened mahi wrap with a pineapple salsa and hubs had the Grouper sandwich as predicted. 

This coco solstice was refreshing too-coconut rum, lime juice, coconut water and club soda. 

We relaxed by our pool and even played some ping pong before changing for dinner. We tried to go to this particular spot (The Wharf) the night before but there was zero parking so on Thursday we decided to try again and took an Uber. Ironically the Uber driver's wife went to my high school in NJ and we are here for all the small world connections. 

We had a seat on their dock and I had fried shrimp while hubs had...the Grouper. Afterwards we went back to the hotel and got in our car for a short drive to  Treasure Island. Hubs vacationed there as a boy and wanted to see if the pirate still stands. 

He does. Once that was confirmed it was back to the beach for yet another glorious sunset. 

Friday morning we decided to have a nice breakfast out and walked to a place called Azura Coastal Kitchen. 

It's located in the Hotel Zamora which has a very mediterranean feel and I loved the vibe. 

Our table overlooked the Intracoastal and we had a mimosa followed by a delicious meal. Avocado toast for me and lemon blueberry pancakes for the hubs. 

We walked back to our hotel and spent some time on the beach before changing for the drive in to Tampa. We had plans to meet up with friends before the welcome party hosted by the bride and groom. 

Traffic in Tampa is nuts. 

Carry on. 

I've 'known' Terri (Your Friend From Florida) since my early blog days and we decided to try for a meet up. The timing was tighter than we would have liked, but if there's anything blogging (and life) have taught me it's Carpe Diem. So we did. 

She lives about an hour away and said she'd drive in so we could meet at the welcome party venue, American Social, and have a chance to visit before we had to be at the party. American Social is a sports bar type of place and it was loud. With a capital L.  It was a happening place and there was some questionable attire, but we made the most of it.  A heated World Cup match was on all the TVs so there was a lot of cheering on top of the conversations happening all around, but fortunately we were given a booth which helped. 

Originally hubs was going to join us, but then a former long-time work colleague who lives in the Tampa area decided he'd like to catch up too, so he also drove in and met hubs at the same time. They hadn't seen one another in more than a decade, so they sat at the bar and Terri and I sat in a booth and chatted. She saw pictures of my grands that I don't share here but it was fun because she knows my daughters from the online world too. She used to follow both of my girls when they blogged and has kept up with them since their university days.

I will say that the bloggers I've met in person have all been exactly who they seem to be online and Terri was no exception. So sweet and genuine and it felt like talking to an old familiar friend. Which she is, and now in real life too. 

In yet another small world moment, as we were wrapping up we walked to the bar where hubs and our friend were sitting and it turns out our friend and Terri had all sorts of people in common. They had a nice little chat and now they're Facebook friends too. 

The internet is quite the connector don't you think? 

At this point the bride made her entrance with her whole big posse in tow, and lots of hugs and more noise happened as we greeted and congratulated and got ready to move out to the patio for the evening. Pretty sure the bride hugged Terri and possibly the groom did too. Weddings put everyone in a joyful mood, plus our friends are their friends and we love that. We said our goodbyes to Terri and joined the welcome party in full swing. 

Did I tell you it was hot? 

The patio at American Social overlooks the harbor and it was a covered space, which did provide shade but also seemed to hold in the heat. We had a grand time seeing all the bride's family including siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and some friends we also know, along with the groom and his family.  We've lived a lot of life with the bride's parents and they are some of our most favorite peeps in all the world. 

I think I'll save the wedding and beyond for Friday's post because I like detail and don't want to skimp in an effort to make this short. Less long? Whatever. Come back for Part 2 on Friday.