St. Petersburg during Katrina

We were more than a little worried when we left for St. Petersburg, Florida on Thursday. Luckily we knew just before we got on the plane though that the hurricane had shifted it’s path. By some miracle, we arrived to a warm evening with NO rain.:jump: We arrived at our bed and breakfast and were pleasantly surprised. This is not normally the style B&B we would choose, but it came highly recommended by a friend. If you ever go to St. Petersburg, Sunset Bay Inn is definitely worth booking. We stayed in the Sunset Bay Suite guest room. The decor wasn’t exactly my taste but the bed was FANTASTIC. No trouble sleeping away from home for once! They also have awesome in room amenities…almond scented Caswell Massey soap and bath products, comfy robes, a refrigerator, cable tv, free high speed wireless access, daily newspaper, and very tasty coffee right outside the room for early morning enjoyment.

The breakfast each morning was delicious. It always began with fruit then egg and cheese soufflé the first morning, stuffed cinnamon toast the second and egg fritata for Sunday morning. Back to the coffee…it is fabulous. Overall I have switched to green or white tea in the mornings but I have no problem reverting to coffee in certain situations. This one was so good that I had to find out where to get it. It is a velvet roast 100% Costa Rican estate shade grown coffee make by Cafe Cartago. They seem to be having some trouble with their “new” website, but it appears you can order it directly from them.

We didn’t take our golf clubs with us this trip since it was just a long weekend (and Jim’s incisions still aren’t healed enough) so we tried to just get some R&R. Mainly we ate, walked, shopped, drank and slept in varying order.

Speaking of walking, this is soooooooo classic Cheryl. Of course, I had to check out whether there was a yarn store nearby. We didn’t have a car and there only appeared to be two of them…one about 6 miles away and the other about 9. Since I had a day to myself, I decided to walk to the “closer” one. I am a runner so I figured it would be no problem (even with remnants of Katrina lurking and 95 degree heat). I also researched the bus routes before I left to have some idea of how I could get back home or be picked up if I got too tired. OMG…after an hour of power walking I was drenched in sweat and there was no end in sight. I was so tired, but again, being a runner, I had many tricks up my sleeve. It’s amazing how you can convince yourself to keep going but just saying, “ok, one more block and you can stop for some water”. What? No water at the next block? “Must keep going”. And so on, and so on. Did I mention that I was also taking what had to be the least direct route possible and that I may have been in a “shady” area? In my experience when exploring a new city, sometimes it is best not to know.

So two hours later, I finally arrive at my destination, Cork and Olive thinking I would buy a bottle of wine for cocktail hour. This is a very cool wine store that specializes in reasonably priced somewhat unusual wines. Outside, it began pouring down rain. I really had no choice but to do some wine tasting. They had some very interesting choices, some of them wines made especially for the store. One of the wines I ended up buying was from Switzerland???? I didn’t even know they made wine! It was a nice light sparkling wine…regardless of from where it originated.

My, am I going on and on! Why stop now though? Part two to come…