We awoke on Saturday morning to high winds and thunderstorms ushering in an unusual cold snap moving in for about 24 hours. We decided to take a leisurely breakfast and plan our routes for the day exploring neighborhoods and towns in the Pinellas County area based on homes for sale that Jerry’s Realtor had sent us.
We headed to Keke’s Breakfast Café (https://www.kekes.com) at their Largo Mall location. There are a multitude of locations throughout all of Florida. We were there early enough on a stormy Saturday morning and managed to get a table easily and lingered a bit while researching where we would be driving for the day. The staff was older and kind but they seemed to have a work shortage (not uncommon in the service industry now) so service was a bit slow and spotty. Since we were not in a hurry, it was no big deal. However, the food in general was so-so. Louisville is a foodie town and we love our breakfast places. Neither of us felt that Keke’s was on the same par as a lot of the breakfast places we have at home but it was still a good meal. (We had an opportunity to go to Keke’s again when we were in Orlando at the end of our trip and opted to go elsewhere).
We had timed it pretty well that the storms had passed through while we had breakfast so now we were ready to drive around and explore much of the area. The highlight of the exploration was discovering the Mainlands of Tamarac by the Gulf. It is a 55+ and older community that is incredibly well-kept, offers a wide variety of amenities and seemed to be a very active residential community (socially and physically). Considering Jerry and I still have a couple of years before we hit that 55+ mark, we took that location off of our list but it was definitely our favorite community of the day.
We continued to drive through Belleair, Bardmoor, Largo and Clearwater, Florida. We liked a few areas that we drove through but nothing really resonated with us. Now that the Florida sun had returned for the afternoon, we decided to walk around the Clearwater Beach area for the afternoon.
It was peak Spring Break time, so Clearwater Beach was teeming with high school and college kids. While the beach never felt crowded, the shops and restaurants did. I had told Jerry that Frenchy’s (https://frenchysonline.com) was a place we needed to grab a bit of food at because it is an iconic Clearwater staple. We went to the original location just a block from the beach. Jerry is a big seafood fan so he was very happy with the local grouper sandwich. I’m not really into seafood so I chose the Philly steak and cheese sandwich which was pretty darn good too!
We decided to brave the truly insane winds that were blowing in the cold front behind the earlier storms we had that day and walk around a bit. I am not sure what the wind speeds were but I can assure you, at times, it was very hard to walk! We spent much of our time simply laughing at how crazy it was.
I wanted to walk to the pier which was an accomplishment (the wind made it a test of endurance). I then asked Jerry if we could walk to the end of the pier and he was game to try it despite being pounded by what seemed surely like hurricane force winds. We were one of the few “brave/idiotic” people at the end of the pier and quickly captured the moment and hightailed it back to land.
By this time, we were pretty tired from the adventures of the day – driving all around the area and staying upright at the beach! We headed back to our carriage house and planned our departure for Sarasota and surrounding areas bright and early the next morning.
I have to add that behind the original Frenchy’s Café, there are 4 darling duplexes for rent. They are each brightly colored (green, pink, yellow and blue). Not sure how much they rent for but we thought this was not only adorable but a great expansion idea by Frenchy’s.
To be continued with Day 3 up next –
Thoughtful Travels 