At some point on Friday (I can't exactly recall when), Meghan mentioned that she'd love to just go somewhere this weekend. No specifics, no other mentions of it, but it stuck out in my mind. So when she asked me Saturday morning what I was going to do that day (she was heading out to go to Hyde Park with Emily while she was getting her hair cut), and I replied with the usual: "video games." Of course, in the back of my mind, I knew what I was REALLY going to do... apart from playing games. By the time she got home, I had already pulled up several different options for a hotel across the bay that she could choose from for a one night only "mini-cation" or "stay-cation" as some are calling them. It's a new trend of saving money by staying close to home and enjoying what your region already has to offer. For example, we've been to the beach one time (count 'em: one) since we moved to Tampa in the summer of 2008. We eventually settled on a little place in Treasure Island (part of St. Pete) that was extraordinarily low in price that said we would have a beach view. It looked modern and pretty upscale, so we went for it.
Upon nearing our destination, I told Megs to keep an eye out for the hotel. I said that from the Google maps I looked at, it would probably be on the right, but that that didn't really make sense considering we were supposed to have a beach view. When we spotted the hotel not much longer, lo and behold, it was on the right. Once we checked in, I learned the difference between "beach view" and "beach front." Still, we could see the beach from our fifth-story window beyond the two-story hotel across the street that was actually on the beach. All things considered, what we paid was well worth what we got. It was a two-bedroom suite where everything smelled like a new house, a balcony that did have a beach view, and big screen plasmas in both bedrooms and the living room.
We took a walk (across the street) on the beach for a while to start. It was a little cooler and breezier than we realized, and there were quite a few seagulls enjoying the surf as it lapped the shore. Regardless, it was a beautiful sunset and a nice walk, a great way to start our night. Soon, though, it got a little too cool for comfort, I began to worry that the birds would resent us invading their privacy, and we didn't want to get shivved by a vagrant if we walked back to the hotel in the dark.After an hour or so of Meghan watching an unsavory show on Bravo that shall remain nameless, and me searching for a nice place for us to go to dinner, she decided to get ready and I decided that we were going to the restaurant with the piano bar. Little did I know... So we got nice and dressed up, found a nice parking spot, walked through the front door of the restaurant, and immediately realized that we were going to be the youngest people in the place. Couple this with the fact that the "piano bar" was actually a "keyboard/synthesizer bar," suffice to say I was a little... disappointed. We were surrounded by dozens of people all at least thirty years our senior, and all with a serious case of sultry-smoker-voice. This is the kind of crowd where the waitress calls everybody "hun," and at least 1-in-2 men wears a floral print shirt. Needless to say, we stuck out like a sore thumb. But then, a funny thing happened. In my profuse apologies to my wife for taking her to what I considered a sub-par selection for our mini-cation dining rendezvous, she told me that it didn't matter where we went, she would always have fun so long as I was with her. And for whatever reason, that one comment and the absurdity of the situation that we were in led to a genuine conversation about how much we love each other. For as long as we've been together (this May will be two years of marriage, this July 4th will be seven years of being together), the level of love between us has never waned. It's grown consistently stronger. I'm not about to go into gushing detail about everything that we talked about that night, I'll just tell you that there is no one else on this earth that can make me as happy as she does, and my only wish in life is that I can make her as happy as she makes me for as long as we live.
Sappiness aside, our evening did move out of the Bobo Fish Barn and Piano Bar (names have been changed to protect the innocent), namely to a place called the Shake Shop (the actual name, because it was actually awesome). The Shake Shop got a 93% positive rating on Urban Spoon, and if you ever find yourself on Treasure Island in St. Pete and you have a hankering for some kind of ice cream? GO TO THE SHAKE SHOP. DON'T THINK. GO. We walked up the steps to the window, saw the pictures of what they had to offer, asked what was in the Vienetta, and made our decision immediately. This is vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream, pieces of waffle cone with chocolate coating, and all of it is layered together. We took that sucker back to the hotel, watched a very poorly acted but heavily anticipated movie on an unidentified network, and spent the rest of the night nursing a sugar coma.
After passing out, we showered up and hit the road in the morning, hitting a breakfast place called Beverly's la something (not actually "something," but I can't remember the last bit), which also had a 90%+ rating on Urban Spoon, and after eating the Croissant French Toast, I have to agree with the reviews. Couple that with Meghan's home fries that were about as perfectly crispy and seasoned as could be, and it really tied together a fantastic mini-cation. The whole drive back, all we could talk about is how I need to man up, sell some jobs, and bide our time until we can retire to a beach house and go to the Shake Shop whenever we want. Until then... I guess we'll just settle for the occasional get away. So long as it's with my love? I'll take it.
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