Day 10 Clearwater Beach

What a difference from yesterday afternoon and evening. The sun is shining, the sea is sparkling and the sand is white! 

Breakfast was back down to the restaurant at the hotel - Jimmy's Fish Bar.  We sat out on the deck area overlooking the bay.  A lovely setting. 

After breakfast we went back up to the rooms and packed ready for checkout.  Our main reason for coming to the beach was to take a boat ride to see some dolphins.  I did consider Little Toot but was fairly certain we wouldn't get Keith onto such a small boat, so we chose the Seascreamer.  We drove up the beach road and parked near Pier 60 then went across to booked for the 12 o'clock boat trip.

With an hour and a half before then, we walked along the pier, then went for a paddle along the beach.  The water was lovely and warm and full of little fish.  Sarah and Stephen were bored in no time but I really enjoyed it.

Was quite surprised that it was feeling so hot next to the coast, had expected a slightly fresher feel, but not to be.  We grabbed some ice creams and drinks before going to back to the boarding area for the Seascreamer.

There were about 10 other families on board (quite a lot were british!) but there was lots of empty seats and plenty of room to move around.  They took us out into the harbour area first where we were able to look at some of the houses whilst also looking for dolphins.  We did see one briefly quite close to the boat but they didn't seem to want to play!   We gave up with that area and went out into the Gulf.  The boat had 2 900+ horsepower engines = a fast ride!  Great fun.  After a while we spotted some more dolphins so the captain took the boat closer.  There were about 4 or 5 dolphins just swimming around close to the boat.  The captain then told us to stand near the back of the boat and he would create a wake and hope the dolphins would play in it.  Thought at first they weren't going to do anything but then we had dolphins jumping on both sides of the boat.  Fantastic.  What a fab show.  So worth doing.  When the dolphins stopped jumping we went back to the dock.  We had been out about 1hr 20 mins.  We all came off with a smile, and Keith thoroughly enjoyed it despite not liking boats.

Weather was very hot - again! thought we had probably had enough sun this morning so we grabbed some more drinks and drove south along the coast road towards St Pete's so that we could drive across the Sunshine Skyway.  From there we headed for the interstate back to Orlando.

Back at the villa and we had a swim while Sarah phoned Izzy.  After 1hr 20 mins I got Sarah to put the phone down and we went to the local Applebees (Berry Town Centre) for some food.  Came here last week and were very impressed.  Dinner, and service, was again excellent.

Another great day with some lovely memories.  A good couple of days.

(photos also added to day 8 now!)
xx