St. Petersburg Beach, Florida

Brad recently had a work conference in St. Petersburg Beach, Florida & I thought I'd tag along since I'd never been.  I'm constantly wanting to visit & explore new places so what better time. 

I'd never visited the Tampa area & had heard great things about St. Pete.  The drive was quite lengthy (9 hours!) & without much scenery but we managed to hit Tampa just in time for sunset (& rush hour). The sinking sun over Tampa Bay was incredible so I knew this would be a great trip.

We stayed at the Tradewinds Island Resort on the beach.  We were initially put into an older, but still nice room.  We hadn't even managed to finish sitting down our bags when the phone rang.  Reception informed us they had made a mistake & double booked the room.  As a result, they gave us a complimentary upgrade (& free dinner) to a sch-weeet suite overlooking the beach.  It was definitely topnotch & the mistake worked out in our favor.  All the staff at the resort were friendly & there were so many amenities.  I highly recommend it if you have kids since there's so much to keep them entertained.

Because Brad spent 8 hours in class each day, I was left to my own devices- which included many hours of wandering the beach with my camera, working on the blog, & vegging out to Gilmore Girls on Netflix.  Having grown up on the sugar sand beaches of the Florida panhandle, I have high standards when it comes to beaches.  St. Pete definitely did not disappoint.  The beach was just as beautiful as northern Florida but with so much less congestion.  Granted it was the first week of November, but the temps were still in the low 80s.  There were hardly any people out and there weren't sky-scraping condos & high rise hotels clouding the beautiful view.

I spent several hours just sitting on the rocks watching the pelicans feed.  (Those birds are huge!)  I also got a kick out of watching the seagulls.  One spent several minutes following another around, giving him quite an earful.

 

Our last evening in St. Pete we managed to get a chance to watch the sunset over the marina while I scavenged for seashells.  As we were sitting on the rocks chatting, Brad pointed out the most incredible thing.  A school of dolphins was frolicking out in front of us.  It was definitely the highlight of the trip. 

sunrise our first morning

the view from our balcony

 Before we knew it, our time in St. Pete was up & we had to make the long journey home.  I was a little disappointed we didn't have time to venture into Tampa to explore but I definitely have no complaints about this trip.  Til next time, St. Pete!