Pumpkin and Spice

If you're like, well... everyone else everywhere, you're feeling the pinch of the economy. (If you're not, send me a job application for where ever it is you work!) While I know better days are on the horizon, I'm impatient and don't like postponing fun "splurge" activities like fabulous vacations. I love vacations, but we just don't have the funds right now to visit luxurious and exotic locales. As a result, I'm becoming a master (mistress?) of the mini-vacay.

I define a "mini-vacay" as a short (ususally weekend or 3-day weekend), local-ish (driving distance), vacation. Cheaper than a "real" vacation, but we still get the change of atmosphere and pace that make vacations so refreshing. Recently, Kyle and I took a long weekend to enjoy St. Petersburg, FL.

Tampa/St. Petersburg is the opposite side of the state from us- we're Atlantic coast, it's Gulf coast. Depending on traffic (as you have to drive through Orlando) it takes about 2 1/2 hours. Our trip was prompted by the sweet! concert tickets Kyle bought me- Cheap Trick, Poison and Def Leppard were playing the Ford Amphitheatre in Tampa- so we decided to make a weekend of it! (He's such a good husband, indulging my obsession with hair/glam metal, even though it's not his favorite musical genre.)

We arrived in Historic Downtown St. Petersburg Friday afternoon and checked into our hotel- a small, historic "boutique" hotel called The Pier Hotel. I love staying at unique hotels, and The Pier certainly fits the bill. Built in 1921, it began life as the Hotel Scott, before becoming the Hotel Cordova in 1923. The Hotel Cordova operated from 1923-1999, when it closed and fell into disrepair. (Rumor has it that the abandoned hotel was haunted by the ghost of the hotel's major domo!) The hotel was restored and re-opened in 2001 as The Pier. Sweet and charmingly old-fashioned, the Pier feels like staying at a wealthy great-aunt's manor home. (It's also in a great location- other than driving to the concert, we walked everywhere all weekend!)

After checking in (and after I teased my hair and applied some eye glitter) we headed to the concert! The sound system at the amphitheatre was awful, but we had fun anyway. Poison is one of my favorite bands, so I was thrilled to get to see them live. (It also rained, which turned my ratted, teased, hairsprayed hair into a hot mess, but once I finger-combed it, it was very messy and rock star-ish. C'est la vie.)

The next morning, we ate a lovely continental breakfast (coffee, fruit, and toast with pb for me, juice and a cream cheese bagel for Kyle) and walked to the Museum of Fine Arts, which was just a few blocks away. The museum was featuring a Andy Warhol exhibition- we managed to catch the last day of the exhibit. Never having seen Warhol's work in person, it was exciting to see- they're so much more layered and dimensional than they seem in art books. It's not a huge museum, but they have a good variety of modern, classical and Asian art. I love wandering art museums, and since we didn't have anywhere to be, we could take our time and meander.

After the museum, we walked along the waterfront and decided to stop at the Parkshore Grill for lunch. They had a great "Picnic" menu- for $15 you got a salad (which was great- cranberries, candied pecans and blue cheese! Yum!), an entree (I had Pecan Crusted Tilapia, and Kyle had a Lump Blue Crab Cake- both were excellent, and perfect sized portions for lunch) and a mini dessert (the dessert of the day was a small square of lemon cheesecake with fresh berries.) Everything was delicious, and the atmosphere was casual, but elegant. We also sat at a table across from one of the players for the Tampa Bay Rays. I don't really follow baseball, so it wasn't as exciting as it might have been for an avid Rays fan, but it was certainly novel.

A friend of ours, Kristine was coming to join us later in the afternoon, but there were several hours until she was due to arrive, and we decided to visit a local cupcake bakery in the interm. We saw an ad for The Cupcake Spot in a downtown guide and I knew I had to go see what they had to offer. It was only a few blocks away, so it was the perfect way to pre-burn some cupcake calories!
The shop was painted bright pink inside and a glass case showcased all the glorious little gems of cake-love. We were still full from lunch, plus we wanted to be able to share cupcakes with Kristine, so we opted for a to-go pack of cupcakes. Since I'm like a 7-year old around sweets, I of course, wanted a million cupcakes in every flavor, but Kyle is much more sensible than that, and suggested a 4-pack. I tried to talk him up to 6, but lost out. Ah, well. Four cupcakes are better than no cupcakes, right?
Choosing a flavor was the hardest part because every cupcake was so beautiful and delicious looking- ultimately we decided on the Chocolate Elvis (a banana cupcake with peanut butter icing and chocolate ganache), the Berry Squared (a strawberry cupcake with raspberry cream cheese icing), the S'mores (chocolate cupcake with marshmallow icing and graham cracker crumbs) and the Butterscotch Baby (butterscotch cupcake with vanilla/butterscotch icing.) We split each cupcake up when we ate them later in the evening so we could each try all the cupcakes, and there was no clear favorite- all were wonderful and moist and obviously made with good ingredients (the vanilla butterscotch icing even had vanilla bean flecks). My favorite was the Butterscotch Baby, but I'm a total sucker for butterscotch/toffee flavored things, so no surprise there. Too bad the commute to St. Pete from Melbourne is, like, 3 hours, or I would totally have applied for a job. Haha!

Right about now I was ready for a nap (honestly, I'm usually ready for a nap) so we headed back to the hotel and snoozed until Kristine arrived. Once she was there, we all had a glass of wine in the lobby/lounge area and drew up our game plan for the evening. I had done some research on my laptop up in the hotel, and had found a walking ghost tour. Kyle and Kristine agreed that it sounded fun. We headed out for a pre-haunting snack at Ceviche, a tapas bar. Of course, at a tapas bar, it's practically a requirement to have sangria, so we split a (very generous) pitcher of the delicious house red. For our plates, we shared the calamares frito (fried calamari- I don't know how traditionally Spanish that it, but damn, I love fried calamari!), papas fritas (housemade potato chips served with maytag blue cheese- yum) and codillo de cordero (a lamb shank braised in wine with white beans and vegetables).

After our tapas, we walked to the meeting place for the ghost tour. I love going on ghost tours, and I think I'm getting Kyle into them, too. This one wasn't quite as theatrical as the one we went on in Key West, but it was fun- I always love hearing the creepy, morbid stories.

All the walking on the tour made us a little hungry, (plus our sangria buzz was wearing off) so we stopped at The Moon Under Water, a cute pub near the waterfront. A couple pints, an order of onion rings and some hummus (the onion rings were good, the hummus was a little pricey for the portion size) and we moved back to the hotel. We shared a bottle of wine and our cupcakes, then headed back up to our rooms for the night.

The next day, we woke up early-ish, ate breakfast, and had planned on going to the Dali Museum- however we neglected to check the hours, and after walking all the way there (which was a bit of a walk- maybe a mile?) realized it didn't open for another two hours. (Lesson there- check your times.) So, instead, we walked back to our hotel, did a little shopping downtown, and made the drive back home and to reality- back to laundry, and work and real life.

It was a very refreshing weekend- it definately inspired us to try to get away a little more frequently. (Though I am looking forward to taking a "real" vacation... I'll need to actually start earning some vacation days at work. Those're comin'.)