Looky what my friend gave me!

[westwindschild]

My friend, D, offered to help me design business cards and said she would get my first box. Wow!!!

We spent the morning working on the design.

Comments

[singingnettle]

Yup, you can take the train to either Tampa or Clearwater/St. Pete.

If you go to Clearwater, you take the train to either Tampa or Orlando and Amtrak provides a bus to Clearwater. From there, we usually take a cab--about $30. Or you can take city buses--$4, a little over an hour, two buses and some walking between stops. If my husband's in town, he can pick you up. I don't drive currently (although I want to fix that), so if he's not home, I'm probably not up to getting you.

If you go to Tampa, you can either take a cab to St. Pete (about $80) or city buses. The city bus route will take you 3 - 4 buses and over two hours, though, so I don't recommend it.

The Clearwater stop is about half an hour from the house, and the Tampa stop is anything from 40 - 90 minutes depending on traffic. It's more expensive because it's about 30 miles and Clearwater is only about 10 miles. (The time differential is because the Clearwater route is largely at city-street speeds and much of the Tampa route is highway.)

We usually go the Clearwater route because it gives us more train options and it's cheaper to get to St. Pete from there. (This has to do with routing and the fact that there's only one or two trains a day that go straight to Tampa, and more trains that split off the route at Orlando--hence the bus from Orlando to Clearwater.) But I find the changeover to bus tiring if I have a lot of luggage to deal with, and the bus routing annoying and inefficient. If I want to save money, I go to Clearwater; if my biggest concern is saving my energy, I go to Tampa and take car service.

[singingnettle]

I also don't recommend taking the city buses while carrying luggage because, well, the changeover in downtown St. Pete is near a park that is sort of a camping ground for homeless folks, and it is really not the best place in the world to look like a tourist and be encumbered by steal-able stuff. I've done it myself multiple times, and no one's ever bothered me other than to make social sorts of comments (then again, I'm on friendly terms with some of those individuals), and personally I feel pretty safe in downtown St. Pete--but the statistics tell me that I'm misguided in feeling that way. And one of my friends did get mugged a few months ago south of the city.