You, Me & the Sea- Spring breaking with my favorite teen- Part 2

April 12, 2023

You, Me & the Sea- Spring breaking with my favorite teen- Part 2

Alyssa and I had a very nice, relaxing stay in Clearwater Beach. Really, our days down there consisted of hanging out on the beach and ocean, eating, walking around the beautiful area, exercising a little and relaxing.

We stayed at the Hyatt Clearwater Beach. I highly recommend it! It is in a great location especially if you don't have a car (we didn't as we uberred from the airport). It is within walking distance of just about everything you need when on a beach vacation: restaurants, entertainment (it was just .2 miles from many boating excursion starting points), shops, a Walgreens and more. It is also within walking distance of the Clearwater Aquarium (a long walk- at a bit over a mile). We would have gone to the aquarium if we'd had more time. We considered it our last day there but decided to do something else instead.

Its pretty coral-ly color stood out among the neutral tones of most of the buildings around it. I took this as we were approaching our building after doing some shopping.

I don't know if these are new innovations or a Hyatt thing- but we were impressed with the room cards. They went around our wrists. No more worrying about having a card with us every time we left the room.

Heading to the beach- this picture belies how many people flocked to Clearwater Beach for spring break. People are bereft in this picture but if you walked to the other side of the dunes, there you would see nothing but people and people and more people on the beach.

Back to the hotel... our room was good sized. It was bigger than the two of us needed but extra space is always nice.

The real draw of the room was the balcony, of course, and the views enjoyed from it.

Gulf side...

The other side of the balcony had views of the bay

The hotel had a pool on the eighth floor. Watching the sunset from up here was evening was a treat.

This was our view when we waited for an elevator to go down. We were on the 14th floor. About half of the time that we wanted to go down, we took the stairs (but we never took 14 flights of stairs up...).

Quirky... Really liked just about everything about the hotel. The only complaint I had was that the gym wasn't very big. One day we both couldn't use the treadmills because there was only one that was not in use. There were only five treadmills total (though there were other machines like climbers and rowers).

We had some "good eats" in Clearwater Beach- mainly beach restaurant style. Nothing fancy or that would appeal to foodies but we aren't foodies so it worked for us ;). Crabbies, as its name does certainly portend, was not high falutin but the food was good so that's all that counts as far as we were concerned. We ate this meal and all of our dinners out in restaurants alfresco.

One place we went to was right on the water and our table was the closest to the ocean we could have been sitting at while remaining on land.

One way we saved on cost and calories was to only eat half of our dinners (we would share an appetizer so we had plenty of food- we did not go hungry) and then eat the other half for lunch the following day. (Leftover) Flounder and fries on the beach for the win

Speaking of calories and cost- you know that I like clearance and candy so when we found these gummies and chocolate for half off at one of the beach shops, you know we bought them.

We liked them so much that we returned to the store the next day for more gummies and to try another kind of chocolate.

The gummies were fun to eat at the beach- our erstaz (and better tasting...) fruit

Speaking of the beach, Alyssa got her tan on when she wasn't in the ocean and I did some beach reading. Not your typical beach read but this book on Christian apologetics was really good.