Nole and I are on our 15 year wedding anniversary trip. Originally, we had planned to go to Curacao in September of 2020 but COVID travel restrictions were in place and we decided to delay the trip a year. When it came time to plan this trip for September 2021, travel outside of the US was still uncertain so we decided to stay in the continental United States so we wouldn’t risk our trip being cancelled again.

Then days before we were set to leave last month, Nova came down with COVID. With Nole and I exposed, even though we are vaccinated, it didn’t seem wise to trave. Many of our reservations were refundable but the resort we were staying had a much narrower cancellation window. Luckily, they agreed to reschedule us after hearing about our situation.

I was pretty crabby that weekend when we were supposed to travel and didn’t. I kept telling the kids “I should be on a beach right now!” when they asked for things. Esme and Nova were quarantined (Esme didn’t get COVID but she isn’t vaccinated so we kept her separate from Nova) and needed waiting on. We let Esme out after her tests came back negative and Nova really seemed to enjoy quarantine, even asking for a bell to more easily call us.

Our twice rescheduled trip finally arrived this week. Nole and I took a direct flight to Tampa to celebrate our now 16.25 year anniversary. We arrived around 6:30 last night and grabbed an Uber to our hotel in Clearwater Beach. We had a great Uber driver named George who gave us tons of restaurant recommendations while I frantically entered them in my Google Maps list. I use Google maps for all of our travel planning, entering all the places I’d like to see and then grouping them in lists by region or city we plan to visit.

Anyway, back to this trip. We got to the hotel and hadn’t had dinner yet so after settling in we walked along the beach to a bar and grill about 15 minutes away. Even at 8pm, we still had to wait 40 minutes for a table. This city has quite the nightlife!

When we left, Esme asked us to send her lots of pictures. We sent her the pictures above last night. Below was her response. We had a good laugh here about “Be Safe”.

Nole and I shared a fried shrimp basket for dinner and we each had a drink. I can’t really handle alcohol anymore. I had one not very strong drink and my face flushed red. I also felt pretty nauseous overnight and this morning. Granted, that could have been from eating fried food at 9pm. The offending drink is pictured below. It was very tasty but I think I’ll stick with virgin frozen drinks from now on.

This morning I was up early and walked to Starbucks which is in the same building as the hotel. It’s right on the main drag here.

Overnight, people could be heard partying and revving car engines pretty late (3 or 4am). What surprised me is how early people got started this morning. While I drank my iced chai, people were “cruising the ave” in their muscle cars blasting music from suped up stereos. I’m glad we will be here until Wednesday because I have a feeling the partying dies down a bit during the week.

Nole slept in a bit and then we went down to the beach where we rented a queen sized beach bed and cabana. We had a routine down of taking a dip in the ocean and then laying in the cabana reading until we got too hot. Here we are in the cabana:

We spent pretty much the whole day like that. I didn’t take any pictures at the beach because I was enjoying being unplugged. I forgot how calm the water is in the gulf. The sand here is called sugar sand and is white and almost powdery. There were lots of boats to watch. Nole grabbed a picture of this schooner.

By 4pm, we had had enough and decided to grab an early dinner. We went to a local pizza place.

I finished the book I bought for the trip already so I picked up a cheesy romance novel at Walgreens. We brought our leftover pizza home for snacking later since we ate so early. It was a very relaxing start to our trip!