Hot Sauce and Aspirin

I live in Austin, but we also have a home in St Pete that we visit as often as we are able.  Early April was one of those fortunate times where schedules aligned, flights were cheap, and there was a lot of work to do on the house, so we headed down there.  I love the house, my husband is less excited about it. But he mostly humors me, and helps out when things need fixing.  The best part of St Pete for him is not the house, it is the town.  There are a lot of good reasons for that, and it seems like every time we go the list gets longer.  We live in a neighborhood called Historic Uptown, with better neighbors than anyone deserves.  The neighborhood also recently got a really cute coffee shop that serves beer, and had some kind of a neighborhood craft/farmer’s market/ clothing sale in the park across from the new shop this weekend.  When we bought the house in August it was with the hope that all the “planned improvements” would materialize, and I am so glad they are.  My dream in life is to live in a walkable city, and St Pete is getting as close as you can get.   In addition to the things in very close proximity, there is also the Dali Museum, which is currently hosting a Magritte/Dali team up.  The museum is a little expensive to justify my level of museuming, which is basically, walk through, look at 2/3 of it, find a couple I love, hunt Pokemon, and leave.  We spent $50 for that.  And have done it more than once! What can I say? Magritte is my jam, and Dali is dope, but I have a social media level attention span.  It’s seriously worth it just for the cloud room.  If it had been a Tuesday, I would have just sat in there for an hour.  But it was a crowded Sunday, so we came, we saw, we went to the bar.  The bars are another big draw for us.  I mean, I obviously drink! WHAT? I know, it’s a shocker, but contain yourself, because if you like to drink and hate to live in a city with crowds of douche bags, (sorry Austin), St Pete is absolutely the place for you.  Within walking distance from my house, which I gauge as under 1.5 miles, there are 5 breweries and at least 1 dozen bars.  If you spread the parameter by about 1 more mile, there are 3 times that.  And the best part is, they are never crowded. The weekend we were in town, our next door neighbor warned me that it was a busy time, which it was, relatively.  But there were still zero waits for tables, zero issues with parking, and zero traffic, as long as you stayed off bridge roads.  It’s definitely my happy place, I can’t wait until we are able to spend lots more (almost all of) our time there.

While we were in town, we hit St Pete Brewing company, Cage Brewery, Pinellas Ale Works, MacDintons, and of course The Hollander Hotel. We also ventured out of downtown for an afternoon and headed to St Pete Beach to check out a bar/restaurant/boat house owned by a friend of a friend, that was highly recommended to us.  Downtown St Pete is urban, you see hipsters, yoga people, homeless people, office working folks, a smattering of tourists, typical city fare.  But 15 minutes in the car over to St Pete Beach and the entire scene changes.  It becomes typical beach dwellers, retired folks and vacationers.  You will catch fun conversations from locals, and find traditional beach food like crabs, fish and fries.  The beer selection is not what you will find downtown, but it’s a decent offering for a beach bar, and the views from the rooftop are excellent.  If you happen to be in the area, go check out Crab Daddy’s at Blind Pass.  Tell them I sent you, they won’t know who I am yet, but they will learn, if enough of you say hi!

Brian and I were responsible humans during our quick weekend getaway, and as such no remedies were needed, though I did take an over EZ just in case.  We are hoping for another quick trip mid May, perhaps the results will vary, so stay tuned!