Florida was wonderful! We would both go back in a heartbeat. We flew into Tampa and then drove to the Clearwater Beach area. The resort we stayed at wasn't right on the main beach, which turned out to be totally fine with me. We had our own private beach so there weren't so many, many people there.
We flew Spirit Airlines. I booked the flight with them because they were the cheapest. Turns out, however, that we had to pay for our carry-ons, our seats, and everything in between. So I'm not sure how much money we actually saved flying with them, but we did get from point A to point B safely...which is all that matters.
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The picture above is the view from our balcony. The buildings in the distance are hotels right on Clearwater Beach. We were on SandKey and all the trees you see are Sand Key Park. Aaron sleeps a lot deeper/better than me on vacation, so as he was sleeping in, I spent my early mornings on the balcony enjoying the view and drinking starbucks coffee (that the hotel provided free!).
We never did go swimming in the pool, mainly because there were always tons of kids in the pool and it was a rather small pool! (Plus, there was the big gulf coast a few feet away!) We did hang out on the chairs/loungers around the pool though, drinking fruity drinks and listening to Christmas music that was playing from the speakers. (Hearing Christmas music and seeing Christmas decorations was a bit weird without the snow...it did not feel like Christmas!)
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The first full day there we rented a Cabana and basked on the beach. I think we were two of the whitest people there thanks to our Scandinavian heritage! I think this was my favorite day...it was so relaxing! There was a prop you got when you rented the cabana so you could prop the back up and a cool breeze blew through and it wasn't so hot. Felt amazing.
Here is Aaron in front of our resort, The Sheraton Sand Key. As you can see (or maybe you can't but..) there were tons of loungers/hammocks around the area. So if you didn't want to walk down to the beach and lounge, you could lounge closer to the hotel.
We were standing in the water when Aaron took this photo - so you can see that there was quite a bit of sand to walk through to get to our hotel. (I also really like how happy Aaron looks in this photo! Looks like my man, who's not a big fan of vacations, is enjoying himself! ha!)
Every evening except for one we watched the sunset on the beach. It was a tad chilly, and of course it's hard to beat a North Dakota sunset, but it was still beautiful.
Our next full day there we drove to Honeymoon Island State Park in our little rental car. Beautiful blue water and silky soft white sand. I felt like I was in the Bahamas!
We also drove to St. Petersberg and went to the Holocaust museum. Aaron and I have both been to the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C., which is much larger than this one, but it was still sobering to walk through. Our next trip to Florida (I say next because I know we'll be back), I really want to go to a Florida history museum. (The history nerd in me is coming out but, I really don't know much about the early years of Florida! It'd be interesting to learn.)
The next day we jumped on the Jolly Trolly and went to Clearwater Beach. Tons of people and lots going on, especially on Pier 60. I don't really have much else to say about it! (Except I'm glad we didn't stay right on this beach...I would have gotten peopled out.)
Our last day was spent at the Florida Aquarium. We probably won't go back here again until we have our own kids, but it was neat seeing all the different kinds of animals that we don't have in North Dakota. The little lemurs were so cute.
Right next to the aquarium is the S.S. American Victory, a war ship that was used in WW2, Korea, and Vietnam. If you think history is interesting, like we do, we would recommend touring this ship. It's a self guided tour and you can pretty much go into every room/area on the ship. We probably spent about 2.5 hours touring it. I'm thinking I may do a separate post just on this ship.
The trip went so fast! Well, I guess not the last few hours of the trip. Our flight was delayed, which caused us to get into Minneapolis around 2:30am. You could say I got a lot of instagramming done and we got quite a few episodes of Criminal Minds watched.
