It’s been a while since Christina and I have grabbed an impromptu flight to a new destination- the last time we flew anywhere was for our honeymoon in November. So this time around, we jumped into our trip with particular gusto.
Neither of us had ever been to Tampa and we had no plan before arriving. In spite of that, we crammed a ton of exploration into the first day of our trip.
We started by grabbing lunch at Mom’s Place, located less than a mile from Raymond James Stadium (where the Tampa Bay Bucs play). Our food was good and it was really neat to dine in the shadow of a significant place like that! We grabbed brunch there, and in particular I loved the Boston cream pie we both snagged for dessert.
Mom’s Place was strangely decorated heavily with Yankees paraphernalia, and after doing just a little incidental research, we found that Tampa is the home of Yankees spring training (the training arena was only about a block from Mom’s Place!). When researching, we spotted that the Braves, Christina’s dad’s favorite team, would be playing in Fort Myers March 1, so we snagged tickets and a great excuse to explore western Florida even more thoroughly.
After breakfast, we solved a mystery geocache for Raymond James Stadium and then headed out toward Clearwater Beach. Despite a cooler temperature for Tampa, Clearwater was still packed, so we called an audible and went to Sand Key Park, just about two miles away. Sand Key Park was nearly deserted yet had a full white sand beach of its own, so we took off our shoes and waded in the bay a little. (All the photos are on Christina’s phone- I will have to share later!)
After getting wet, we dried off by finding some geocaches on the trails around Sand Key Park. We had a bit of a scare when a very large discarded rope appeared to be a giant snake… Even when I saw the threads I was still a little wary!
From Sand Key Park, we went to Escape FLA in Largo, FL (near Clearwater, across the bay from Tampa) and played their “The Hatch” room. Not a few weeks ago, Christina had asked me why we’ve never seen a LOST-themed escape room, so when we saw this room, it became a must-do. The room didn’t disappoint- we enjoyed it quite a bit!
After Escape FLA, we headed back across the bay and checked in at our hotel- a surprisingly affordable private resort on the bay, the Inn at Little Harbor. Our room overlooks the marina and I’ve been writing this article sitting out on my balcony. The concierge told me that dolphins aren’t uncommon on the marina, and I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled, but so far it’s just pelicans.
After checking in at the hotel and grabbing a pizza from a local joint, we saw that we could drive up to the next town (Brandon, FL) to play a game at Legendary Escapes. We first partnered up with strangers in a teamwork-based game (Club LOL) where the team starts in two separate groups, and we enjoyed ourselves enough to play a second game back to back (Revenge of Anubis). Though we were starting to get exhausted, we still managed to clear Revenge of Anubis before heading back to the resort.
One last little adventure of the night- upon getting ready for bed, we discovered that what we thought was a travel-sized bottle of contact solution was actually a form of medical contact cleanser (something we didn’t know existed until we read the bottle carefully!). The resort didn’t have any contact solution, and nearing midnight, no nearby stores were open, so we had to drive about 10 miles to the next town over to get to a 24 hour CVS.
Finally after all of that, we were able to retire and call it a night. It’s now March 1 and we’ll be heading down to Fort Myers soon, for baseball and whatever other adventure calls!
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