Riding along on my pushbike, honey, when I noticed you.
Today wouldn’t be a pushbike but we were planning to take a two wheeled tour with our much-rescheduled free Segway tour in St Petersburg. We were both awake today at 6am which was a small improvement on the day before.
Breakfast was no different to the day before, except I decided to try out the automatic pancake machine. I pressed the marked button and watched through the glass on the side of the machine. It prepared 2 pancakes at a time. They were both quite small but perfectly formed.
Although the tour wasn’t booked until 1.30pm we decided to set off before 10am so that we would have time to explore St Petersburg as we couldn’t remember going there before.
The journey of 35 miles only took about 40 minutes. As we approached the waterfront, we suddenly realised that not only had we been to St Petersburg before but we had also actually done a Segway tour here before! I was disappointed by this, until I remembered we were doing the tour using free vouchers we had been given and that we had done all the other various locations that the Segway company offered.
We parked in a large multi storey car park we think we used before and made our way down to the street. Karen’s caffeine sense of direction took us directly to a Starbucks we had been to before which was opposite the Tampa Bay Rowdies stadium where the players were training on the pitch. I took the time to look them up on Wikipedia to see if there were any players I had heard of, but there wasn’t. I assume the only reason that Norwich City are affiliated with them (apart from the free trips) is that they play in Green & Yellow. I did shout out ‘Its Tampa Time’ but obviously that is only a thing known to Carrow Road regulars.
Following a sit down whilst Karen drank her coffee, we decided to have a walk around the waterfront. We arrived at the Dali Museum which was an interesting looking building. We wandered inside to look around the gift shop and garden. Neither of us had any desire to pay the admission fee to see the Dali exhibits. They would have just made me angry if we did and modern art goes right over my head.
We continued our walk and found a Publix from which we bought some lunch which we took and ate in a park opposite where the Segway tour would start from.
At the appointed time we waited for our guide to arrive along with 3 other people who were to do the tour with us. Our guide was a dude called Oliver. He was very personable and knowledgeable. Within a few minutes he had all of us operating Segway’s like experts.
If you have never thought about riding a Segway, then do think about it. If you have thought about it and not done, just do it. They are fantastic fun. They are super easy to ride. You can go miles on them and see so much. It is amazing as you ride along how many people about you about them.
Anyhow the start of the tour took us back along some of the route we had walked this morning albeit with sound tracked with some good guidance information from Oliver. We then went back on ourselves passing where we had started and the proceeded a different direction on the waterfront. What a revelation this was. Over $110 million had been spent since we last visited on constructing a new pier. Well to call it a pier is a massive understatement. It is more of an entertainment complex and very impressive. We were just annoyed that we had walked in the opposite direction this morning and missed all this.
After exploring the pier area, we continued along the waterfront. We had an unscheduled near the end to stop to watch a dolphin that was hanging around very close to the shore line. Then sadly we headed back to the starting point as the 2-hour tour came to an end.
On the photo above behind us is a Tiki BYOB bar boat. You take along your own booze and sit around the bar on the round boat. The captain who is also the barman stands in the circular middle area and serves you whilst he takes you out to the middle of Tampa bar to drink the day away. What a great idea to do and what a great business idea.
Although we had done a Segway tour here before. With all the redevelopment since this tour was so different. I absolutely loved it.
We then drove back to the Hotel to chill for a while before heading out for some food. Tonight, we decided to try Speak Easy Clam Bar. This seemed to be a restaurant with only two local outlets but the reviews were very positive. It also happened to almost opposite the Hotel, but we had to take the car as the 8-lane highway was not one to try and walk across.
The place was modern, trendy, large and absolutely heaving with locals. Fortunately, they found a table for us straightway. We were allocated a great waiter who exhumed enthusiasm. Karen went for Shrimp Linguine whilst I had the Seafood Lasagne. Karen thought hers was very good, whilst I would describe mine as exceptional. It was to die for. The fresh pasta was heavenly and it had so much tender sweet lobster in it. We will definitely go back when we are next in the area.
On the way back to the Hotel we passed another Walmart and nipped in to exchange the PJ’s Karen had purchase the night before for a smaller size. Then as we were both still feeling the effects of the jet lag, we were in bed by 10.15pm.
