I asked some friends who live in the Tampa area to recommend a local beach. The unanimous reply was Clearwater. Now I don’t know where I got this assumption, but I was picturing Clearwater as being a quaint little seaside town; something like Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. It turned out to be much more like Miami Beach than Rehoboth. Towering hotels, busy streets, GPS app pissing me off, and the beach itself was quite busy – though not overcrowded. It was also similar to Miami Beach in that it’s a beautiful expanse of white sand.

One of my friends had told me that the prevailing current in the Gulf of Mexico kept the water warmer on the Gulf coast than on the Atlantic coast. He was wrong. This water was cold. Okay, maybe not truly “cold”, but definitely not as comfy as I remember the water being at Miami Beach when I was there a few Januaries ago. To be fair, I picked the wrong day weather-wise to go to Clearwater – the high temperature was in the low 60’s, and there was a stiff breeze coming in off the gulf. Ultimately, if you’re going to be in the Tampa Bay area and you have good beach weather, Clearwater Beach is worth a visit. But if you have a choice between Clearwater or a beach on the Atlantic side of the state, I’d vote Atlantic.

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As I was walking back to the car, I spotted a little shop called Rocket Fizz Candy Store, and decided to stop in. I was looking to find some dark chocolate; their selection was decent, not great. (I ended up getting a Chocolove brand strong dark chocolate bar, which is quite yummy!) But where this store really stands out is their collection of sodas – an amazing array of different craft sodas. Never have I seen so many varieties of root beer! I settled on a vanilla caramel cream soda, which was delish!

I got back on the road intending to visit the city of Tarpon Springs. But after fighting for awhile with traffic and my evil GPS app (seriously, do any of you have a GPS app you actually LIKE?), I decided to head back to the hotel. I looked into some local restaurants for dinner options, but eventually, Parkinson’s made me go to Burger King.