Clearwater Beach, Florida

Hello everyone!  I thought I'd share pictures from our trip to Florida that we took in November.  It was lovely!  We went to Clearwater Beach.  Clearwater is situated along the west coast of Florida on the Gulf of Mexico.  It's just a jump away from Tampa.  In fact, we flew into Tampa and got in our rental car and hopped on the freeway that takes you right to Clearwater.  It was so easy!

We stayed at the Hyatt Regency Clearwater Beach Resort and Spa.  I would go back again.  We got an ocean view suite.  Livin' in luxury!  It was wonderful!  Our room had an extra bonus because we also had a view of the beautiful pool.  

We are the kind of vacationers that don't like to have an itinerary.  Sure, maybe someday we'll be more adventurous, but this trip wasn't.  Ha!  We went to the beach everyday and ate really good food.  That's important to us.  

The weather cooperated.  We had two cloudy days.  On those days the temps were in the 70's, otherwise it was sunny and in the 80's.  Perfect.  Of course, it doesn't feel that hot when you're next to the ocean. 

There is something about the ocean that is magical.  It draws me like a magnet to it.  The minute I'd wake up I'd go outside to look at it and just stared in amazement all day.  I couldn't get enough.
  

“‎I have always been fascinated by the ocean, to dip a limb beneath its surface and know that I'm touching eternity, that it goes on forever until it begins here again.” 

― Lauren DeStefano, Wither

This was a view from the balcony of our suite.  Our suite was situated perfectly because we could see basically all around us.  

Here is the view of the pool to the right of our suite.  Our suite was on the 9th floor and the pool was on the 8th floor.  I loved it because I liked all the people around.  It felt like "city life" to me.  Lots of people hung out around the pool and there was a bar called Swim close by where people could get drinks and appetizers.  Kris would run down to the bar and grab us a couple drinks.  I loved all the action going on.  And the bar closed by sunset so there wasn't any crazy stuff going on!  he he

Here's another view from our balcony looking to the south.  If you keep going south along the coast you'll run into St. Petersburg.  We attempted to drive down there one day.  That was the worst part of the trip.  Ahem.  We had driven about 30 minutes and all of a sudden Sophia starts screaming, "I'm hungry!  I'm hungry!"  Um....ok...I think....more like h-a-n-g-r-y.  State of anger brought on by hunger.  So, in a state of frenzy we pulled the station wagon (not really) into the nearest restaurant possible.  Big mistake.  Huge.  "Oh, this looks fun!"  "It's a boardwalk with a bunch of places to eat!"  Let's just say we took two bites of our food and ran.  That bad.  Sophia said, "Mom, dad, why are we running?" "I'm still hungry!"  Luckily, a little pizzeria around the corner redeemed our decision to stop at this boardwalk from circa 1983.  Seriously.  
By the way, yes we did pay for that horrible meal.  You pay before you get your food.  very tricky.

I can't complain because honestly that was the only bad part of the whole trip.  We just stayed put at the resort the rest of the time.  In the morning we'd walk up the street to Dunkin Donuts (best ever), then on our way back we'd let Sophia play at the park while we sipped our coffee.  Coffee is so, so important by the way.  The first two days of our stay we suffered through bad coffee.  It was hell.  I'm just saying.  When we discovered Dunkin Donuts I swear I saw a unicorn and a rainbow appeared in the sky.  We skipped to the park that day we were so darn happy!
The rest of the day we spent at the beach.  There was a store adjacent to the hotel where we bought groceries.  To be honest though we ordered room service every single dang day.  It was fabulous.  The food was great.  We did eat at the restaurant in the hotel twice.
I have more pictures to post on here from our trip. I think I'll stop here for right now.  Enjoy!

Love,
Sarah