First thing this morning was an Easter morning stroll through Safety Harbor. It was advertised that there was to be a farmer's market, but we never found it. We did though, walk through some beautiful streets with some colorful (purple, pink and yellow) houses and found the Safety Harbor art museum/activity center. It was all pretty cool and for "brunch" time on a Sunday morning, very hot and humid.
The only real thing on today's agenda was the Tampa Aquarium and a Dolphin watching cruise. We also toured a gentrified part of town that was a little scary called YBOR, found Tampa University that had a really cool old building/hotel at it's center, explored Davis Island and the 4 boys in my family devoured a giant 28" pizza.
The aquarium was relatively small and not quite as nice as the aquarium we've got here at home, but we did see an alligator swimming around and watched some sting ray's and lemur's during feeding time. The boys had fun, there was a really pretty photography exhibit of birds native to Florida and a good gift shop.
We boarded a small ship to go out on a dolphin watching cruise but alas, no dolphins. There were a few false dolphin sightings that ended up being pelicans diving into the water but it's okay. We've seen dolphins before and I'm always a fan of a boat ride. Wind in my hair, smile on my face and lots of really good people watching. The boys lost interest a bit - tired and hungry and Elliott, even though he was in charge of the camera, was definitely getting tired of hanging out with us and getting really hungry.
The boat cruise was about 90 minutes and we got back, found our car and headed out for a late lunch. Ross had found a highly rated NY style pizza joint - a buy the slice sort of place right in the heart of downtown by the harbor, the university and the hockey arena. We explored a little, parked the car and headed in to check things out. As we were huddled up trying to figure out who wanted what, a kid behind the counter yelled over to us. He said that they had a pepperoni pizza ready and waiting - the take out order was cancelled - and it could be ours for $10. Ross, never being one to pass up a deal walked over to the counted, handed over a ten dollar bill and gave me some water cups before I ever really figured out what was going on.
We then sat down with a whole restaurant of people staring at us and our tiny kids with a giant pizza. I ate two small square slices. Elliott ate a couple. The rest of that 28" pizza was devoured by Ross, Wyatt and Quinn. This epic feat gave birth to the "Pizza Bro's" and I'm still a little disgusted that they ate the whole thing. But, in a year or two, we will probably need to order 2 of those monster pizzas.
After that, with full tummies we decided to drive around Davis Island. It reminded me a lot of Coronado, in San Diego and it was very nice. The homes were very eclectic and as we scoured Zillow and Realtor.com as we drove around, all were 1 million dollar plus homes. Even the dumpy ones. Safety Harbor is a community we could afford, if we wanted to. Davis Island is not.
As we've been touring Florida during this vacation, it's been really nice. Generally, when we travel we are always overbooked and exhausted because it's either Disneyland, which is 3 or 4 marathon days or it's a quick trip somewhere new, usually for an exhibition soccer game, where we try to cram as many activities as we can into a very small window of time. It's been so nice this trip to RELAX a little, have a "light" daily agenda and just sort of explore. It has also been very nice to sleep in. Every day. That's always good, too.
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