Florida - January 2025

Pam did one last conference session this morning, explored the vendors / exhibitors a little more, and was back at the Marriott by 10:30AM.  We checked out, picked up the rental car from Hertz's location in the hotel, and by 11:20AM started out on our Gulf Coast exploration.   Taking the I-275 across Old Tampa Bay and south towards the Sky Bridge, our first stop was Gulfport.  Then it was a coastal route north, passing St. Pete's Beach, Indian Shores, Clearwater Beach (and all the smaller beach towns along the way), and making several beach stops enroute.  After Clearwater Beach, we headed inland a bit, driving up the east side of Saint Joseph Sound through Clearwater proper and the Scottish-influenced town of Dunedin, until we hit Honeymoon Island State Park - our last stop of the tour.   The day was drawing to a close by the time we left Honeymoon Island, so we headed from there directly to the hotel in Clearwater.  Applebee's -- our favourite A...

  It's so nice to stay in a place where, when you fling open the curtains in the morning, you have such an interesting view.  This is the view from our hotel room, looking south to the opening of Tampa Bay, with some noteworthy places listed. The entrance to Harbour Island, a manicured peninsula of ritzy gated communities, hotels, and country clubs, just south of the Tampa Convention Centre.  Notice all the poinsettias in full bloom. We came to one intersection and realized we could go no further:  in every direction was the entrance to a gated community!  So we had reached a veritable dead end on our walk! American flags are on a 30-day half-masting in honour of former President Jimmy Carter, who passed away on December 29 at age 100. Today was the 'hottest' day of our visit, with temperatures reaching 20C.  Mind you, between the wind and the overcast skies, I sat on the pool deck almost shivering for two hours - foolishly determined to get in a couple of ...

After a “toss ‘n turn” sort of sleep (possibly due to the horrible TV fire scenes from L.A. we filled our heads with before turning out the lights), we again watched the sunrise as a motivator to get up and start the day.   Another breakfast in the Concierge Lounge and then Pam was off for her 9AM conference start. Since there weren’t great sessions from mid-morning until lunchtime, at 10AM we met up for a walk to the University of Tampa campus to visit the impressive and historic Henry B. Plant Building.  From there, we found a sandwich place back in the downtown core and took our sandwiches to the hotel for a quiet lunch together.  The woman who prepared our sandwiches told us that, the day before, a man had jumped from a ninth-storey window a few buildings away.  As sad as that was to hear, it was also quite jarring and depressing.  So a quiet lunch together was what we needed. A university-level clarinet ensemble performed at 1PM, so we enjoyed that.  P...