Last Good Part of Town
We always go Greyhound because neither one of us can drive. Rob's license was suspended in September and I just don't have a car/car insurance. Even if Rob's license wasn't suspended, we'd still be taking the bus. The distance between Tallahassee and St. Pete is roughly 250 miles. It's about 4 hours if you take the interstate, 5 hours if you take US-19, and 9 hours if you take the bus.
We took pictures with the family because I realized I have very few pictures of my family. That's my mom and my brother, Devin (14).
Mom, Devin, and Rob. Yeah, apparently the rabbit ears thing is still popular among eighth graders.
For whatever reason, this picture reminds me of a prom picture.
My mom, jokingly, told him to put me in a headlock.
Friday
We went to the Dali Museum downtown. I had never been before so it was something different for me to do too. The Dali Museum in St. Pete is the largest collection of Salvedor Dali's work outside of Europe. The current exhibit was Dali and Women so there were some pictures that he drew when he was young and of course art where he used his sister, aunt, and wife as models. It was really great to see.
After the museum, we went to the Pier which is also downtown. Rob had seen the Pier from the outside but had never actually been inside.
The Pier is five stories tall. The first floor is shops and a food court, the third floor is a restaurant called the Columbia or something like that, and the fifth floor is an observation deck and there's also a restaurant up there called Cha Cha Coconuts where we had lunch.
The aquarium is on the second floor. I hadn't been there in years because they started charging admission about seven years ago and I still remember when it was free. I had a good time up there though and Rob seemed to enjoy it, plus admission was only five dollars.
Looking from the second floor to the first floor.
Rob on the observation deck.
Downtown St. Pete
My mom picked us up from the Pier at about 4:00 and she took me to the mall to buy bras. When we got back home, we were picked up by Bri and went over to her place for a little bit before going to a really nice Italian place with Sean and Dan. I can't remember the name of the restaurant but it was really good. Unfortunately, they don't serve sweet tea which is true for a lot of restaurants in St. Pete. Rob almost wanted to leave because of it.
After dinner, we all went back to Bri's condo and played Mario party before Bri, Rob, and I went cosmic bowling with Nikki, Louis (Nikki's boyfriend), Jake (Nikki's brother), Erica (another friend from high school), and Pete (a friend of Nikki's).
Nikki and me. Apparently eighth grade boys are not the only ones who enjoy bunny ears.
Bri, Nikki, Erica, and me.
Saturday
Rob and I spent Friday night at Nikki's house and woke up early to go to Venice which is about an hour south of St. Pete.
Me, Nikki, Bri
I thought it was weird that this beach had actual rocks on it. A lot of Gulf beaches have concrete and stuff like that but not genuine rocks. It reminded me a lot of pictures that I've seen of beaches on the Northwest coast.
Bri had looked somewhat contemplative.
Nikki and Louis.
Nikki and Louis had brought hammocks and were both sleeping when I took that picture. I thought it was cute.
After the beach trip, Rob and I went back to my mom's and just stayed home for a few hours before being picked up by Catie and Nick. Catie and I have been friends since we were in sixth grade so we went to her house in Sarasota. We saw her house and met her dog and just kind of hung out for the rest of the night before Rob and I got tired and went to sleep.
Sunday
We woke up, went to Publix to get something that we could fix from Catie's house since she didn't have any food. Once we ate, we went to a winery in Pasadena where her father works for a free wine tasting. I was a litte wary of it just because I hate wine but I absolutely loved what I sampled. Apparently I don't like grape flavored wines. The ones that we had were made from other fruits like oranges, limes, and coconut. There was also made from honey which tastes a lot like mead. It was so good! I'm definitely going to buy some next time I go down there.
Today actually hasn't been a bad day. It was the first day of Summer C. I'm only taking one class right now and I'm still taking the lab that I was taking before. This is a lot easier than the other summer session since this class is ONLY based on tests and quizzes. No essays, no presentations. I love it! It's called Family Life Span Development or something to that extent. I took it more because I had a really good experience with my Family Relationships class freshman year and this doesn't seem to be much different. The only thing that our teacher is really big on is coming to class every day which I can definitely do.
I went out in the torrential rain after class because I was afraid that I had overdrawn on one of my accounts by buying a bus ticket back home plus I needed to pay bills anyways. It turned out that I hadn't overdrawn which is good but also means that I could have waited to deposit the money. Actually, if I had waited 10-20 minutes, the rain would have passed and I wouldn't have gotten as head to toe soaked as I did. Lesson learned. I'm also about $40 away from not owing the University anymore money. Woohoo!
I was on the fence about whether or not I was going to go to the gym since the sky looks so grey and I don't want to get caught in the rain again but I'm thinking I should be good for an hour of cardio.