Last week was spring break (wooooo! Show us your boobs! Yeahh!). No, no. It wasn’t like that. Now I have to refute the statement I previously made: I can plan things, but they have to be big things, and planning big things with lots of people is difficult. So for my last spring break, I did not do the whole “woo/show us your boobs/Cancun rocks” thing. About two weeks before break, I decided that I was going to take a plane to Florida. My friend Matt (read: ex-boyfriend with a soft ex) has an apartment down in Clearwater because he’s a big deal with Monster.com and is doing big things and making a lot of money. Good for him. Anyway, my roommate and I flew down with Matt basically just not to be in Massachusetts. We were stoked to trade in dead stupid trees for lively palm trees.
So we had a free place to stay AND Matt’s friend lent us his car for the week. Um, can we say nicest kid ever? So we took advantage of the beach and the warmth and the fact that we were hundreds of miles from home. But if you know Jenna and me, you know that we are down for whatever random-ness we can get ourselves into. So I guess I’ll give the top three (random) things we did. Funny thing is that they all happened on the same day.
Clearwater/St. Pete: Fun Tuesday
1) We started our day with a trip down 19S into St. Petersburg. There were only a few things I actually had “planned” on doing and going to the winery was one of them. I had found it online while googling the area, so I had the address and phone number written down. Of course we didn’t call for directions or anything; we just drove until we were in St. Pete (Jenna’s got a great sense of direction). So you know, 45 minutes later, we had only seen a billboard for this place, and it didn’t help us with directions. So we stopped at a gas station and bought a map. The man behind the counter asked us where we were going and then offered directions. We took his directions. They led us to a drawbridge. . . that wasn’t going down. We waited for a while before turning around and getting back on 19 and looking at the map.
“Okay, Central Ave. runs right into Pasadena Ave South. I remember seeing it up there; it was the only one that wasn’t a numbered avenue,” I explain to Jenna. I am her trusty copilot for the week because I can’t drive stick. We find the turn and take some guesses. Finally we start seeing little green signs with outlines of grapes on them: WINERY. Yes. After some crafty maneuvering (Jenna never just turns around), we make it to the winery, which pretty much resembles a little grey shack (nothing compared to the winery I went to in Sicily, but that’s a whole different ballpark).
So we hop out of the car. I tug on my little black and white dress as I slip on my strappy, kitten-heeled sandals. Of course the first question Jenna asked that morning was, “Ooh, what do we wear to a winery?” She went for the black gauchos and a tan tank top with a long necklace of random stones. We are quite classy broads.
Jenna insists that she has a sweating problem as we approach the door. She has me check out her back, but I don’t see any wet marks. Seriously! She tells me that she will kill me if there are any. We walk into the winery silently but smiling as we both fold our sunglasses up from our eyes and into our front roots.
We’re busted as soon as we walk in. A lady greets us as we peek around the gift shop. A tasting bar sits against the far wall. “Have you ever been here before?” she asks with a light Southern accent.
“No,” we shyly smile like a cute boy has just kissed our hand.
“Well, this is our gift shop. We make all of our wines without using any grapes. We offer a tasting, that is if you girls are over 21, which it looks like you might be,” she tells us as we try not to let our eyes light up, “and there’s a little tour you can take-”
“I want to do that first,” I quietly interrupt. I don’t know if she hears me, but I know Jenna understands because she likes order to events, too (first we learn then we booze).
The “tour” ends up being a little DVD thing to watch, so we pretend to watch intently. Jenna already knows all about the fermentation process because she’s a Hotel Management and Tourism major, and she’s taking a class in beverage management (we took bartending and got TIPS certified together). After the show is over, a younger gent comes up to us and asks what we thought and if we wanted to partake in any tasting today.
We’re already on our way to the far side of the shack.
Another young gent is behind the bar. He has a ponytail and glasses and a sleeve of bluish-green flame tattoos covering her right forearm. He starts by questioning our “normal” wine drinking habits, and we joke about anything that comes out of a box or jug. Taking into account our girlish giggles and taste for something light, he decides to start with a mystery wine. His hand covers the label as he pours two tastes. Since the DVD had taught us how to taste wine, we play connoisseurs as we try to figure out the mystery of this light yellow liquid. I want to say “apples” because of the crispness of it, but I doubt they have any apples down here. Jenna guesses some sort of citrus because, duh, we’re in Florida. We’re wrong. It’s made from carrots.
“It has more antioxidants than pretty much anything ever,” he tells us. I think about my mom because she’s always drinking pomegranate juice and the likes for the antioxidants, but I decide that we can do way better than the carrot stuff.
We taste a good amount of wines before poking around the shop and tasting a few more. Your pallet gets all muddled though, so tasting lots of different wines without a food cleansing in between doesn’t offer very much.
We settle on “Mango Mama,” which the bar gent refers to as “happy girl wine.” I buy a bottle for the fam and a bottle of Mango-Mama-champagne for when we graduate. We grab a couple little souvenir glasses as well, and we’re out the door. Florida sunshine just gets better with a little sweet wine (I don’t know why I just typed that. I don’t know why I felt the need to wrap that all up like that. I think I am getting back into travel writing mode, but I’m not going to edit this, and I am totally rambling blog style right now… weird…).
2) Jenna stole some tourist guides from the winery, so I looked into a place to eat for lunch. She had already mentioned Hooters, and I was obviously game-on (sprrrrring breeeeeak!!!!). So there happens to be one on Gulf to Bay Boulevard in Clearwater. I recognize that road because it’s near Drew Street… and that’s near Matt’s apartment. So we follow our instincts (well, I look out the window, it’s Jenna who has the instincts), and all of a sudden, she points out, “Hey, do you think those orange letters are it?” Beat. Yessss. So we head into the grey shack-like building (weird how many shack-like grey buildings there are around this place). We obviously judge the waitresses because, like, you just have to. I am all about inner-beauty and stuff, but like, if you work at Hooters… anyway, our waitress is just kinda scary, but she is nice. We order a pitcher and talk about the happy hour laws that Massachusetts doesn’t allow. In fact, there are lots of drinking laws down here that we wished we had… 2-for-1’s and the likes. We think it’s smart that our waitress comes back with a baggie of ice to put in our pitcher, but obviously she doesn’t know how we Northern girls can drink. Pitchers shouldn’t be allowed to get cold.
As we look at the menu, we notice that it says “The Original” on it. No. Could it be? We read the history on the back. Oh my. We have landed ourselves on a physical piece of American history! The Original Hooters! We enjoy our meals but now it’s kind of naptime. We look for some sort of cool merch at the store, but it was all pretty lame (on our ‘senior skip day’ in high school, we all went to Hooters in Boston [after the science museum] and bought shirts [mine said ‘Hooters Girls Think I’m Hot’—it was for little boys]. Then the next day we all got in trouble for wearing them. Apparently one of the teachers was offended. And by “we all,” I mean my music teacher was like, “Kris, sing your part… all your friends are being called down to the office” [Thanks Mr. Nick!]). So we left empty-handed but super-full. We pulled out of the back of the parking lot only to discover this beautiful, big, pink building with large windows: the Hooters Corporate Building! Hahaha. I love the fact that they kept the restaurant a shack and hid the expensive building way back behind it. We took pictures on their sign.
3) Our afternoon tradition was to go back to Matt’s apartment and chill out while watching a bad movie on TV. In one of our little tourist guides there was a dolphin cruise being offered… with unlimited beer and wine… and we had a coupon for $2 off! So back to Clearwater Beach for this little excursion. $18 for a boat ride to see dolphins was justifiable I guess, but the free beer and wine were what tied it all together. The boat holds up to 125 passengers, but there were about a fifth of that number onboard. We had planned on going to on the sunset cruise, so you can imagine how romantic it was for Jenna and me. We did see a bunch of dolphins. And it was really cool because they were all jumping in the wake (a whole family of them… totally sweet).
So as if being the two girls on the cruise who were obviously in it to drink wasn’t enough, I think everyone assumed we were a couple (or at least that’s what some of my comments made them think… muahaha). And on top of this, right as the sun went down behind the water, they started playing the Titanic song! I almost died laughing. After crying a little. Crying from laughing. Guys? Come on.
Anyway, the boat cruise was about 75 minutes long, and we both managed to put down about 6 drinks. So we were all fired up for a night on the town. Not to mention we forgot about eating dinner. And not to mention that we only spent $10 on drinks for the rest of the time we were in Clearwater…
It was a good time.
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