Day 3 in Tampa… Also the only day spent in Tampa itself. We closed out our trip to Tampa with an action-packed day.
In my previous post, I mentioned that we started the day by watching manatees from our room’s balcony. This morning was also the first time we walked in daytime around the premises of The Inn at Little Harbor, and wow, does it make us feel the need for a repeat visit. A quiet, private beach on a gated island, with two restaurants, a spa, and plenty of pools. I couldn’t believe how reasonable the price was to stay there!
During checkout I spotted a sign advertising $6 off admission to the Florida Aquarium. I snagged the coupon and off we were on our first adventure of the day. After a quick pit stop at the Smoothie King, we headed to the aquarium.
The Florida Aquarium was remarkable in how accessible all the animals were. Visitors could touch jellyfish, anemones, stingrays, and sharks. Sea life creeps me out a little, but I had to experience some of the magic so I touched a stingray on its flipper while it went by… while also sticking my new watch deep into the tank. Thankfully it’s water resistant.
I think my favorite fish at the aquarium was the pufferfish. Each of the pufferfish had nearly human-looking expressions fixed on their faces, of either awe or joy or anger. They looked like something out of a Pixar movie. I also really enjoyed the sheepshead fish, which has ugly human teeth that look super out of place on a fish.
From the aquarium we could see two places that made us wish we had another week in Tampa. One was the cruise terminal, which always sounds like a wonderful place to be. The other was the SS United Victory, a WWII cargo ship and museum. I’m a sucker for WWII ships, and I’ve explored the Missouri, Iowa, and North Carolina as well as the USS Hornet carrier. So a different class of ship is a big draw for me!
After the aquarium we headed to Rabbit Hole Escape Games to try Shadows of the Skunk Ape- a campground adventure featuring a mysterious sasquatch. I was also incredibly eager to try their Alice’s Tea Time game- a nine hole mini golf course / escape room, and thankfully, we were able to schedule the two experiences back to back.
Shadows of the Skunk Ape was a fantastic game. I’ll provide a separate writeup in full, but the quick version is that puzzles and theme were both fantastic, and the attention to detail was incredible (the area just outside the room was decorated like a nature trail visitor’s center!). The game also had what may have been my second best “dumb Brian” moment in my escape room history- I’ll save that story for my full writeup!
Also warranting a full writeup of its own is Alice’s Tea Time, which was a home run for me. I couldn’t believe the level of detail invested in the game- every single hole was a fully realized vision of a different scene from Alice and Wonderland, progressing through the full story start to finish.
Skunk Ape room #2 was unavailable due to renovations- otherwise it would have been very tempting to try to squeeze that one in, as well. With as impressive as room #1 was, I’d love to see where they went next.
Rabbit Hole’s owner tipped us off about a place called Armature Works just down the road- a trendy food mall in an old brick warehouse, located on the Tampa riverwalk.
I am ever the connoisseur for breakfast food at dinner time, and I had a fantastic breakfast sandwich from a place called Graze 1910.
After dinner we took a long stroll along the riverwalk (no manatees this time) and found one last geocache for our trip. The temperature was perfect and we regretted having to hit the road to head back to our plane to Chicago.
Our trip to Tampa was one of our best little trips. Entering the weekend with absolutely nothing planned, we managed to explore most of southwest Florida while packing adventures into nearly every minute of the day. A return trip is definitely in the cards- it’s only a question of how long!
Leave a Reply