Tampa 2021: Diary – Day 3

We slept in later than usual and it felt nice. We all headed down to the hotel restaurant to get breakfast which is included because of my Hyatt Globalist status. Breakfast was a buffet or off a menu. We chose the buffet and it had a good selection of hot and fresh items, including an omelet bar.

Morning Activities

My brother in law had to work so he got to his calls right after breakfast. My wife took the boys to the Clearwater Aquarium since it was a rainy day. There is a larger aquarium in Tampa, but it was a lot farther away.

I stayed back in the hotel to work on a programming project idea I had and enjoyed the time to myself to do a little coding. It’s something I don’t get to do a lot of in my day job since most of my time is spent doing manager things.

The Clearwater Aquarium was a lot of fun for the boys, but there wasn’t much to do beyond a few hours so they were back at the hotel by the time it was lunch.

I took the boys to a pizza place on the front of the hotel called We the Pizza. It turned out it was really good. The crust was especially memorable. They had many different unique slices and Tomatico tried (and loved) the meat lovers special. My youngest and I stuck with cheese slices and really enjoyed them.

My wife ended up going to the bar, Coco’s, the valet had recommended the day before. She was able to find covered seating for herself and said the food was surprisingly good. They apparently have live music on Thursday nights through the weekends so she might be back.

Pool and Beach Time

My youngest wanted to go to the pool once we got back from lunch so I took him. The rain had stopped though it was still a bit cloudy. He made some friends and had a blast. My wife took the time to scout the beach in more detail. She loves the beach and the ocean.

After we were done with the pool and once my brother in law was done with his calls we all went down to the beach. Tomatico and I played frisbee while the rest of them waded into the small ocean waves.

The boys were starting to get hungry so we looked at the nearby options for restaurants. We checked the menus of a couple but decided to go back to the one we went to the night before, Crabby’s.

Tomatico decided to get his own blackened mahi-mahi and inhaled it. He also tried the other dishes but mostly focused on his own for once.

After dinner we split up again and Tomatico and I went up to the gym. I was definitely sore from the previous day’s workout but we managed to do the same balance and body weight exercises. I then did a Peloton ride while Tomatico did the elyptical.

At home we use the Peloton app with a non-Peloton bike. It’s a sort of fake-Peloton (a Feloton?) but is about 1/4 the price of the real one. It was neat being on a real one for the first time and there were some nice features about it, but nothing that would justify the price difference. Honestly, I think our bike is more solidly built and we connect the app to a TV so the screen is bigger than the one on the real bike. I still enjoyed my ride with Cody, though. He’s my favorite instructor!

Back in the room it was late and we were tired and went right to bed after a shower. The next day finally looked like it would be clear.