It’s palm tree day!! Obviously, I was awake before my alarm went off. I facebooked and such and then let my alarm go off for Nick’s benefit. We eventually got up, packed up, and ate breakfast. The breakfast box was not particularly satisfying, but, it beat standing in the Dunkins line at the airport!
We were checked out and on the road to the airport about 6:20. Under normal circumstances I would probably never park at Logan because $$$$, but, these are not normal times. Nick, being a big guy, does not love extended mask wearing, so I felt the best way to keep travel days as manageable as possible was to park right at the airport.
We got to the airport easily enough (it was basically a straight shot from the hotel), but it took two tries to successfully find the entrance to Central Parking. Once in Central Parking, we found a spot up on level 6, despite the “lot full” sign that seemed to exist on every level, including that one, and made our way to the terminal.
Central Parking is surprisingly well designed, considering it’s Boston. Signs everywhere direct you where to park to be close to your terminal, and the garage connects to most of them. We very easily made our way to terminal C, via elevator, moving, walkway, and finally an escalator that looked down on the total chaos that was the JetBlue check in area.
Thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as it looked, and I had printed our boarding passes at home, so all I had to do was scan the boarding passes and our luggage tags printed out. We tagged our bags and joined a giant, but reasonably quick moving luggage check in line. Within 10 minutes our bags were checked, and we were cruising through the TSA Pre-check line, where only about 5 people were ahead of us. Security was easy, complete with cool hands free ID readers, and neither one of us had to be scrutinized at security for a change. Within a surprisingly short amount of time since arrival, we were finding our gate (C22), and parking ourselves to wait for awhile until boarding.
The wait passed quickly enough, and I managed to find a Hudson News that was a) open and b) hadn’t been consolidated with a Dunks (one line for both...bad news at 7 am) for bottled water. Shortly before boarding I popped a piece of gum and quickly realized that gum with a mask on is the fastest way to clear those allergyish sinuses on the planet…WOAH!
Boarding went smoothly enough considering we couldn’t really actually hear the gate agent, and surprisingly (or not...this WAS the first real vacation for most in over a year), the completely full flight was fully boarded and pushed back from the gate more than 5 minutes early (8:18 am). Yay for more vacation time!
The flight was uneventful. Nick slept for most of it and I social media’d courtesy of JetBlue’s surprisingly good FlyFi. We landed in Tampa a full half an hour early, and then sat for that entire time, waiting for our gate to open up. At least I could see sunshine? And the flight tracker changed screens enough to sort of keep me entertained.
Eventually the plane at our gate left and we bee-lined it for A11. Deplaning was quick, because it was a New England based flight and we had had half an hour to prepare for this, and pretty soon we were in the Tampa Airport.
I’ll probably say it again, but Tampa is an incredibly well thought out airport. Our wait for the train to the main terminal was quick, our luggage was on the carousel we were told upon landing, the luggage appeared quickly, signage is good, and so on.
Anyway, we claimed our bags, and then headed up the escalator to the train to the rental car facility. I thought the world’s longest airport escalators were in San Francisco and Atlanta, but this one here in Tampa might be in competition. Woah. It was a little dizzying.
We eventually made it to the train platform and onto a train to the rental car center. I foolishly stood. This train moves right along and has several curves and hills. It was an experience!
Now...about the rental car situation. Last spring, to survive, the rental car companies did mass fleet sell-offs. AND car manufacturing plants were shut down, leading to a shortage of new cars in the industry (Nick sells cars..I’m hearing about this one a lot). And now revenge travel has started, leading to massive rental car shortages, given the other factors. So...prices are...alarming. Initially I had booked a rental car with Dollar because the price was about the fairest I could find from a company I thought I could skip the line with. Then about a week later, I read on the TripAdvisor forums for Tampa that Dollar was not honoring the skip the line feature of being a Dollar Express member right now, and Dollar, Thrifty and Hertz customers were ALL having to stand in the same line at TPA, resulting in incredibly long waits.
That wasn’t going to work for us. So I scoured the internet and miraculously found an Alamo deal with my BJs membership that would get us a mid-size SUV for “only” $50 more than the (midsize car) Dollar price that I had had. Alamo, based on TA forum reports was still honoring the skip the line online check in feature.
As we hunted for the entrance to the garage for Alamo, we were beyond relieved that I had found that thread on TripAdvisor. The Hertz/Dollar/Thrifty line stretched the length of the building. Meanwhile, we made our way to the garage, waited about 30 seconds to speak to the girl at the curb in the garage, and then we were hunting for the perfect rental in the surprisingly well stocked mid-size SUV row.
Nick sells Toyotas at a large dealership that has 5 major brands across its campus. Within months of him starting to sell Toyota he had talked me into ditching the HR-V that I LOVED (but that he hated, because it was very much Heather-sized, not Nick-sized) for a Rav-4 (don’t worry, I love my Rav!). With half a dozen Rav-4s on the rental line, you would think we would have ended up with a Rav for a rental. But...Nick spied a Bronco, something all the Ford customers seem to want, and that his dealership just can’t keep in stock, or even sell without a VERY long wait. For the purposes of research, we chose the Ford Bronco.
We loaded the car up (which for a current Ford SUV had a very spacious cargo area), I did some bag re-arranging so I’d be ready for touristing, and we hit the road. It was time for lunch!
We took a drive down 275, and then into downtown St Pete. After only one wrong turn, we found the St Pete Pier, and, surprisingly easily found parking. After figuring out the pay by plate meters that would be a part of our lives for the duration of this trip, we made our way to Doc Ford’s Rum Bar and Grille (any questions why we chose this place with that name?), admiring the views, and annoyed by the sound of the St Pete Grand Prix.
Yeah, you read that right. They were racing cars down a runway that was just across the water from the pier, and through some of the streets of downtown. The street closures started just beyond the entrance to the pier.
Needless to say, we turned down the beautiful covered patio next to the water for indoor dining to avoid the constant mosquito drone noise of the cars. On the plus side, we still ended up with a view of the water. Lunch was fantastic and service was great. There’s a reason that this place is number 1 on TripAdvisor for all restaurants in St Pete. Nick had a key lime colada followed by the “Cure” (their version of the painkiller), and a grouper sandwich. I had the most amazing coconut mojito and their lime panko crusted fish sandwich. Great lunch!
We wandered a little bit, in the vicinity of Doc Ford’s, admiring the view. This is a cool pier area.
Then it was back to the car for our next stop, Sunken Gardens. This was about a 20 minute drive. Sunken Gardens is Florida’s oldest roadside attraction. Pictures online made it seem like a great tropical change of scenery, and therefore a great way to kill time prior to check in at the hotel. It was! We both enjoyed, and we spent over an hour there. Beautiful tropical plants, and several different animals too. Admission was reasonable, and everything was clean.
Check-in at Sheraton Sand Key was quick, but, even closing in on 4:30, our room wasn’t ready yet. The check in guy took my phone number, handed me a pack of stuff, and told me it’d be ready soon and they would call when the room was ready to come get the keys. I went back out to the car, and we decided to just park and sit in air conditioning in the car for a bit.
Thankfully within 15 minutes, the front desk called that the room was ready, so we grabbed the luggage, headed inside, and pretty quickly had our keys and were headed for room 552. Side note, this key made me think of Epcot for the entire trip!
When we got to the room, Nick started unpacking immediately, and I started checking out the view and taking pictures of the room before we made a mess. Great view, clean room, tiniest hotel bathroom ever. And the decor was clearly meant for me to stay there.
After we settled in, we decided to work our way into town for dinner. I was a little nervous about the parking situation, but we managed to score the one open spot that existed in the beach lot closest to our dinner destination. We paid the meter and then made the quick walk to the Taco Bus.
We are Diners, Drive-ins and Dives fans. Years ago, we saw the original Taco Bus in Tampa on the show. They’ve since expanded and have multiple locations, which includes a location in Clearwater. While the original is a food truck bus, essentially, this one is a store-front location. It’s a counter-service place. We each had a margarita (strawberry for me, “blue” for Nick), Nick had a pork quesadilla, and I had a ground beef chimichanga. The food was fantastic, and inexpensive. Dinner and drinks for the two of us was less than $30. We were super happy with this meal! Guy Fieri just doesn’t lead us wrong.
Full of amazing food, we made our way back to the hotel, where Nick settled in to play his video games (I’m told the wifi at the Sheraton was vastly superior to that at the Hilton Garden by the airport) and I went down to the beach for sunset.
A word about the beach here. It’s pretty big. I heard one of the front desk dudes at check out saying it’s like ¼ mile from the edge of the grass at the resort to the water’s edge. It’s nice firm sand until pretty close to the water, so I thought it made for a really nice walk, but they do run a golf cart to shuttle people to the water and back on request.
Sunset was beautiful. That’s really all that needs to be said.
Following sunset, I went back to the room, showered, and crashed. The room had great blackout curtains, and the bed was VERY comfortable, so we both got a great night’s sleep.
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