We hopped on a superstretch tourist bus (complete with the bendy thing in the middle) for a ride to Clearwater. The ride was longer than I expected, maybe about one hour -- I thought it would be more like 20 minutes. Sometime toward the end of the bus ride, one of the conference coordinators said that the dolphin tour people canceled at the last minute because of some kind of problem with the bo
at. Fortunately, the bus driver was able to suggest another boat company that might be able to take us.We arrive at the harbor, and we're watching the conference coordinator walk over
to "The Calypso Queen," which apparently is the replacement boat. I need to add a picture of it later (UPDATED to add photo at left!), but just picture the cheesiest boat you can imagine -- yellow, with a fake coconut tree on top. The logo on the flag consisted of martini glasses, and the interior was even more cheesy, with tropical print plastic seat covers over all the chairs. But, my theory is that at least we have a story to tell, and this boat was definitely more interesting than the one we were supposed to be on (see picture on the right)! While we didn't see any dolphins, the captain pointed out some nice homes that belonged to celebrities such as John Travolta and Tom Cruise. The cruise lasted a little over an hour.
The adventure didn't end there. On the bus ride back, I noticed that we had been sitting at a traffic for quite a while. Several minutes went by and I saw cars passing us on the left as we just sat there. The conference coordinator came on the PA system again and said something about a truck hitting the bus. None of us even felt anything! So, we sat there for a while. One person commented that it's too bad this didn't happen near a Starbucks or something. Instead we were stuck in a boring area surrounded by houses on one side and a couple of office buildings on the other. After a while, the bus moved. But we were turning right onto a side street to get out of the way of traffic. Bummer. Stuck there for a while longer. At least we were having a good time on the bus sharing stories and getting to know people better. I think the whole ordeal took about an hour. Again, I just looked at it as another story to share when I get home!
After we got back to the hotel, we decided to hop into our car rental (our friends picked it up at lunch so we'd have it ahead of time for our drive to Orlando) and go to a mall. The hotel gave us directions to two malls on the same street. We ended up at International Plaza. It was a very nice mall, although surprisingly dead. I guess everything in Tampa is dead! We went shopping for a while, then set out to find dinner.
We found an outdoor restaurant and entertainment area. THIS is where everyone wa
s! No wonder the mall was so dead, everyone was out here eating, drinking, and having a good time! There were a number of places to choose from, but we chose a quiet place that had no wait or huge crowd, the Gallery Bistro. Although being that quiet was a little scary...was something wrong with it? The food was terrific. We all started with a cup of blue crab and corn chowder, which was most excellent. We shared an appetizer of bistro chips, which were freshly made potato chips topped with a balsamic syrup and gorgonzola cheese...yum! For my entree, I had a cobb salad. It was good, but too huge after eating the soup, and a bit overdressed. I should have just ordered a small salad (which was still pretty big!) like my friend did.Once again, our adventure was not over. By the time we finished dinner, the mall was closed, and we couldn't go back to the car the way we we came in. We found an escalator down to the parking garage, but we were parked on the other side of the mall, so we started walking. Then a security truck pulls next to us...uh oh, were we doing something wrong? Were we going to get busted? "Do you guys want a ride?" the friendly female security guard asked. There were five of us, so two walked and three of us hopped in with her. I figured she was probably bored and enjoyed having some company for a little while! We have found the people in Florida to be very friendly overall.
Coming up...driving to Disney World!
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