Vacation Recap Pt II

Our vacation was relaxing.  So relaxing that we had free tickets to a dolphin cruise but passed it up to stay on the beach and soak up more rays.  We did take a break from the sun one day and ventured to St. Petersburg to visit the Sunken Gardens and the Dali Museum.

The Sunken Gardens was a tropical paradise.  As soon as you walk in your shoulders drop.  There were so many rare botanicals and everything was so beautiful.  The trees were so tall that they created a roof for most of this outdoor attraction.  We actually decided to go here on a whim and I'm so glad we did.

This tree looks painted but it actually grows like this!  It's called a  Rainbow Eucalyptus and I'm in love with it.

We planned to visit the Dali Museum and I found out that Thursday's the admission is only $10 after 5pm and the parking is free!  I didn't take my camera with me because I was sure that I couldn't take photos inside (though I did sneak one photo of a cool illusion piece), and I was right although photos were fine outside of the galleries.  There was a labyrinth outside which also had some cool pieces at the entrance.  Lastly, if you don't know about Salvador Dali, he was a surrealist artist with some amazing paintings that will make your mind go nuts.  He also had a really cool mustache which there is a sculpture of outside.

 

           Dali image via

As far as the rest of our vacation, we ate well, drank well and enjoyed being off of work.  We even saw a pirate ship sail by one day.  The weather was surprisingly mild at night, so sitting on the balcony listening to music was my favorite thing to do.

So that's our vacation.  As I mentioned before, I'm ready to go on another one.  I'm thinking a long weekend around our anniversary maybe to a Bed and Breakfast.  Have you guys gone on any fun trips this summer?

Vacation Recap Pt I

Hello!

We are back home from vacation and I'm already planning out the next one!  I told Simon that I want to start taking quarterly vacations, so we'll see how that pans out.  In the meantime I wanted to share with you all some of the sights that were seen on our vacation to North Redington Beach, Florida.  We've never been to this beach, but our travel agent (more on that later!) was able to find a great hotel at a great price.  We were situated between Clearwater Beach and St. Petersburg, 30 minutes in both directions.  This area of Florida was pretty quiet which is perfect for us.  There were a lot of homes being built on the beach and they were GORGEOUS.  No photos of them, however, so just image huge homes with 3 and 4 car garages.

To start, we left on a Monday morning.  Atlanta traffic isn't too friendly, so although check-in was 4pm and it was an estimated 7.5 hour drive, we left at 6:30am in order to beat rush hour(s) and decided to make the road trip a mini trip in itself.  We stopped for breakfast once we were well outside of the city (in Macon, GA to be exact) and relaxed for about an hour.  We got back on the road, crossed the Florida line a few hours later...

...stopped for lunch at a gorgeous rest stop (that's an oxymoron right?) and ate at one of the pavilions.  The rest stop was so gorgeous I had to snap photos.  One thing that wasn't so cool though was the "Warning Beware of Poisonous Snakes" sign.  Huh??

Maybe they were being funny (or not), but there was an attraction there called the Snake Wall which basically is a bridge that you walk up and the end is an overlook of one of the state parks as well as the interstate.

We even saw caterpillars!  I've never seen this type in person and boy do those suckers move fast.

After about an hour here we finished our trip (even got a little turned around towards the last 15 minutes of the drive thanks to road construction/changes and Google maps not having current info) and arrived at our hotel, the Doubletree.  Here are a few photos of the beach in no particular order.

There were hula dancers on Friday night at the cookout that the hotel had, and on Saturday morning I was surprised to see a beach wedding!

I will be back with part two of our vacation soon!