I originally had wanted to go on a trip somewhere back in September. I remembered the September before traveling to Europe, and reminiscing had really given me the travel bug, this time within the United States. I had been looking at places in Florida as I had never been before. September was also the time that Astro was ready to come live in Kenosha with me. Having Astro in Kenosha took away my travel bug at that time, due to wanting to spend time with him. I wasn't really interested in leaving him after finally having him here. What killed the traveling bug even more was the fact that Florida ended up getting pummeled by two hurricanes almost back to back around September. The want to travel came back again towards the beginning of the year, and I considered even going down to Florida for my birthday, but decided I would rather go to Florida when it was at least warm enough to enjoy the beach. I considered maybe April, but late April would be when it would be around beach temperature, but it was also Spring Break as well. I finally settled on mid to late May.
The friends that I asked to come along were busy with their own travel or couldn't afford to come along. I was just about ready to do a solo trip to Daytona Beach when my mom was talking to my uncle about the trip. He asked if it would be okay if he came along. He had had a hard last couple of months, but was totally okay with me saying no. I agreed and that lead to the brainstorming process of where we'd actually travel to. My Uncle Mike had been to Florida before, and had really enjoyed visiting the Clearwater and Treasure Island area. He also had enjoyed visiting Southern California when he had traveled there in the past so California was also a possibility. When he had heard that I had never been to Florida before we decided on Florida, and then finally Treasure Island where he had found a really great AirBNB that featured a room overlooking the Intercoastal highway, across the street from the ocean/Gulf of Mexico, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and full kitchen with a dishwasher. The room also had a patio you could sit out on. The condo property also had a pool and a hot tub which was a plus. I didn't think I would utilize the pool being so close to the ocean, but I definitely took advantage of both.
I dropped of Astro at my parent's house, and that's where my uncle picked me up at 10am to travel down to O'Hare. We ate McDonalds breakfast sandwiches and stopped at an oasis on the way. We dropped off the car, and a shuttle picked us up to take us to the airport in less than a minute of arriving at the Park N' Ride. Since there's a new rule about having your real id for traveling O'Hare was really insistent about seeing it. We were asked by 3 different TSA agents to show them our IDs. (The Tampa airport only asked once.) We got to our gate, and unfortunately our flight had gotten delayed an hour so we got to Tampa at 6:30pm instead of 5:30pm. After landing in Tampa we hung out at the baggage claim for awhile. I was convinced my luggage had not come out onto the belt yet. (it had). It was laying face down so it looked like a completely black bag instead of a red and black bag. We were just about ready to ask about my bag but then I spotted it. Both of these pushed our time back for getting to Treasure Island. Our rental car was thankfully parked at the airport. My uncle had found an app that is like AirBNB where you can rent other people's cars. It was even a newer Toyota Corolla. The drive to Treasure Island was a 40 minute drive.
We dropped off our things before going to get groceries and eat dinner. By this time I felt wiped out, and had a slight headache. We had a Publix right next to our AirBNB which was nice. At the grocery store the cashier got distracted while talking to me, and started scanning the person behind us groceries before we had paid. I thought maybe since I had never been to a Publix before that they were able to do that, but nope. The cashier seemed to be high school maybe early college aged and had been looking at me the whole time, so he didn't see that there was a space between our groceries. We got it all sorted and dropped off our groceries before getting dinner. The restaurant closest to our AirBNB was packed and had live music, so we opted for an Italian restaurant a few blocks away. I found it interesting that a touristy area didn't have much open after 9pm. We had spaghetti before heading back to the AirBNB for the night.
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