St. Pete

This one of the reasons I love to come to St. Pete, to spend time with my grandsons. When you get five of them together they find ways to have a great time out in the backyard with a couple of balls. When they fart they blame it on the dog and laugh. They love to hug you when they’re sweaty. They play hard and leave a bathtub ring.  

St. Pete’s motto, Be prepared to be pleasantly surprised, is a good one. We tried out a restaurant that was new to me called PDQ and the food was plentiful, tasty, and inexpensive. The bonus came when one of the staff passed out free t-shirts to all our boys and wished them a happy spring break.

We visited Lowry Park Zoo (technically in Tampa) and were pleasantly surprised there too. In addition to getting to see the animals, they have some fun rides and we didn’t have to purchase any tokens to ride them. Even though there was a little chill in the air the kids enjoyed the splash of the log ride. I rode the tiger rollercoaster (once) and the kids went a couple of times more. My youngest grandson rode a pony, a zebra, and an ostrich (and a couple of others- maybe the manatee and gorilla) on the merry-go-round. He loved it when he was really little and called it the me go round. I am glad he still loves it and it was fun to see him wave to his older cousins every time we went around. The flying bananas were a blast too. We engaged in a spirited discussion about how penguins can shoot their poop 4 feet while we watched the African penguins line up for feeding time.

We squeezed in trips to two parks too, Fossil Park and Crescent Lake. That’s why I love St. Pete. It’s filled with pleasant surprises.