Day 110: Sunday, December 23, 2012

Port to Port: Tampa, Florida

Underway: 0:0 am      Motor Off: 0:00 pm      Miles Traveled: 0      Stayed At: Hotel

First Things First: First hotel stay of the trip; First time visiting relatives.

Mile to Mile: We got up early for our almost 3-hour drive to Tampa to pick up the girls at the Tampa airport (airfares are cheaper here plus we can do some Florida sightseeing and visiting on our way back to Fort Myers). Jess was exhausted after a long sleepless redeye flight from San Francisco by way of Dallas, Texas. Thankfully, both Jess and Sarah’s flights were on time and arrived close to noon so we only needed to make one trip by the airport. We wandered around a nearby mall to waste some time and grab a snack before checking into our hotel near the airport early to relax for a few minutes before heading to Brandon, Florida to visit relatives we haven’t seen for many years.

Elena, my cousin, organized the gathering and, even though it is only a couple days before Christmas, almost everyone was able to attend. Damen and Marissa hosted the gathering at their home and we enjoyed a wonderful pre-Christmas Greek feast of gyros, sandwiches, salad and dessert. (Damen is a manager at a Greek restaurant so he has connections). It was fun to catch up and share stories with 3 generations of our Florida family It was really nice that Jess and Sarah were with since we last saw everyone was about 10+ years ago (way too long but Florida is a little too far east when we tend to go west to Vegas, Phoenix or California on our vacations).. Time flies. Thank you everyone for a wonderful visit.

After leaving the party we stopped by Elena’s new apartment to get a Chi Chi fix (Chi Chi is a cute but very opinionated chiuhua).  Sarah is counting down the days till she can get a puppy so she bides her time by playing with other peoples’ dogs.

Thankfully we didn’t have to drive 3 hours back to the boat tonight (thank you Jess and Sarah for arranging this) – we got back to the hotel relatively early and some of us were asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow.  (I stayed up to get my Storage Wars fix on cable – it’s a simple show but interesting to watch. It’s always amazing how much people spend to store junk – sometimes for many years). Tomorrow it’s time to hit the beach for some sand, surf and shells.