Sunshine Trip: Day 1

I left my apartment at 5:20 am in order to get to DTW in time for my 6:50 am flight. Aside from the reduced cost of the early Friday morning departure, the appeal of leaving so early was that I got in to Tampa before 11 am. I was a little anxious to get my rental car since I have never gone through that process on my own before. Thankfully the process was pretty straight forward since I had previously reserved as car online. I was out of the airport in a red chevy sonic by 11:15.

I had thought about heading directly to one of the many St. Petersburg/Clearwater beaches but I opted to head to downtown Tampa. I was planning on going to the Florida Aquarium so I parked in the aquarium parking lot for a small fee. Instead of actually going to the aquarium, I ended up walking around downtown Tampa and along the Tampa Riverwalk. I walked past the aquarium, the Tampa Bay Times Forum (home of the Tampa Bay Lightning), a history center, a bunch of hotels, and unfortunately a few free parking lots enroute to the business district of downtown Tampa. After walking through Poe Plaza (a green walkway between a few tall buildings), I ate lunch at a place with a   small replica school bus out front appropriately called the Taco Bus. After my tacos, I walked along the Riverwalk back to my car. The Riverwalk was nice but there weren't too many people around. That might have been because it was a weekday and the skies were getting pretty dark. In fact, I had to wait out a fairly heavy downpour for about 45 hours underneath a covered part of the Riverwalk.

After the rain had let up and I got back to my car, I headed across the bay to Clearwater to check out the beaches. I didn't have time to really enjoy the beach but I did get out of my car to walk on the white sand and stick my feet into the Gulf of Mexico. I then headed to downtown St. Petersburg to Tropicana Field for the night's baseball game. I have written about the stadium and the game in a previous blog post. After the game, I went across the Sunshine Skyway Bridge to get to my hotel for the night. The Skyway Bridge is supposedly one of the symbols of the Tampa Bay area but it was a little dark for me to stop and admire the bridge.