As I tend to do too often, I slept right through the alarm clock. So I rolled out of bed at 7:40 and hit the gym for a half hour, doing some abs, power walking, and a little bit of weights. Breakfast was whole milk and half a FitCrunch bar. We headed to Clearwater Beach around 9:30. This place was rated the top beach in America by USA Today. Well, we learned something. Never go to the place on a weekend. It is a thin inlet, with two streets going north and south. And I don't know if I have ever seen a place that is harder to get a parking spot. By 10 am, the traffic was bumper to bumper.
We wound up grabbing lunch at Frenchy's Saltwater Grille. There are maybe eight different Frenchy's restaurants in the area. This one is off the water, so the location wasn't the best. We had fried alligator to start. I've had fried gator a few times and this wasn't one of the best. The gator skin was dark and I had to chew pretty hard. It came with a BBQ sauce on the side, but I think remoulade works much better with gator. Mom got a Greek salad with grouper that had a huge hunk of potato salad in the bottom of the bowl. I'm sorry, but has anyone ever heard of a Greek salad with potato salad in it? Anyway, I had candied bacon wrapped Sriracha scallops. The scallops were flavored in Sriracha and lime, wrapped in brown sugar bacon, seared, and baked. They were sweet, salty, smoky, and spicy. Very good. I also ordered a side of steamed veggies: broccoli, cauliflower, and two baby carrots. They definitely needed seasoning, so I used plenty of lemon, salt, and pepper.
I knew parking would be impossible, so I took a quick 45 minutes or so to check out a few shops. I was sure to check out Hogan's Beach Shop. It was so much better than Hogan's Beach. There was tons more merch to buy. I really thought about getting a Hulkamania tank top, but for $20, I felt it was a little much. Instead, I get a yellow koozie. The funny thing was they even had dog shirts. If only I could have gotten one of those for Hogan when he was still alive. I also walked onto the beach for about ten minutes with my shirt and shoes off. Felt great to feel sand beneath my feet!
I went into two or three souvenir shops, looking for a decent tank, but decided against it in the end. So we headed out and checked out a dog parade at the Largo Botanical Gardens. Mom found out about it through the local newspaper. Unfortunately, the paper failed to mention that dog registration starts at 12. We took it to mean the parade started at 12. We got there and found out that it didn't start until 2. I took pictures of a couple of plants and just left. Since Mom had to do laundry for her upcoming tour, we headed back to the hotel around 1. First, we stopped at Rita's Italian Ices. They had something called a gelati, which is an Italian ice topped with soft-serve ice cream. I got the pina colada ice and vanilla ice cream. One of the most refreshing things I've had in a while.
Back at the hotel, I sat by the pool, mostly tanning and following the final Jets game of the season. We stayed till around 5:30, when we left for an evening service at BridgePoint Church. It's a growing church that had four services a day and is leasing their current space until they move to a new facility in three months. Great to see they're growing. Then, around 8:00 it was dinner time. Back over the bridge to Tampa for some pizza at Garibaldi's. The antipasto appetizer with Genoa salami, olives, fresh mozzarella, roasted peppers, fresh basil, and baked bread was great. All I needed for perfection was a few marinated artichoke hearts. For the pie, I appeased Mom and went with bacon, mushrooms, and tomatoes. I knew it was a mistake; I think their Italian sausage and meatballs are better. And I certainly feel roasted peppers add more flavors than tomatoes. The pizza was fine, but it should have been better. Also, there was not enough sauce, which always bugs me. And the fact that they charge $2 for extra sauce is a joke too. Anyway, I'll stop there.
Monday morning came. Mom was supposed to leave early in the morning for the tour. Unfortunately, this joke of a bus company never returned any of her messages regarding who the driver was and if she would be picked up, if I had to drop her off at a certain spot, etc. And she began leaving messages on Christmas Eve? It's just pathetic. So we had to wake up at 5:30 a.m. to call these fools again to find out where the hell we were supposed to go and at what time.
We drove ten minutes west to largo. Mom missed one of my directions and we band in from the north instead of from the south. And it's a good thing she did because as we were turning onto the street where the bus company is, we passed the driver in the bus! I saw the Mayflower tours sticker on the website and I knew it! Thankfully we got his attention and hooked up with him. It turns out this driver found out he was driving for this tour one night prior! One night! That's terrible communication and shows a total lack of planning and preparation.
Anyway I took the car, went back to the hotel, worked out, cleaned up, packed, and checked out. I headed to south St. Pete to get cash, gas up (only cost me fifteen bucks), and grab food. Mazzaro's opened at nine, so I figured why not. While I was in the parking lot, I got the great news that Jets general manager was fired and the terrible news that coach Rex Ryan had suffered the same fate. I'll have another post about that later. I had a sausage sandwich, which was really good and would have been great if they had put marinara sauce on it. And I had the pistachio cannoli, which was perfect. Back over the bridge to Tampa. I played the acoustic version of Hotel California and I felt so free, if only for a few minutes.
Nothing too exciting at the airport, except it was cool to have the TSA guy compliment my Mets cap. Time to go home and pick up my girl from the kennel
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