Clearwater Beach

Today our path led us to Clearwater in the greater Tampa area, more precisely to Clearwater Beach. Already upon our arrival, this place conveyed a special holiday feeling. A beach promenade with plenty of restaurants, bars, shops, street vendors, and street musicians vying for the attention of tourists invited us to stroll around. Somehow, the entire atmosphere reminded us of the well-known holiday resorts in Southern Europe...an impression that we had for the first time on our trip and in this form. Our hotel, the beautiful SpringHill Suites by Marriott, is directly in the second row to the wonderfully white and fine-grained beach. After often not sparing with superlatives about the visited beaches in the last days, I prefer to refrain from that now. Just this much, the beach is great! :-)

I don't want to withhold three noteworthy facts about Clearwater and Clearwater Beach from you... The part of the city without the beach has been the headquarters of the Church of Scientology since 1975 and houses their so-called Spiritual Center. But what is even more interesting is that Clearwater Beach is also the birthplace of the (especially known among the men) restaurant chain (keyword: orange hotpants). That's right...Hooters! In addition, the city holds a world record with 361 days of sunshine per year, which has yet to be broken.

After our check-in and the obligatory inauguration of the hotel pool, we felt like having an Asian dinner today. Unfortunately, the offer here in Florida is in no way comparable to the one in California...we would only give it an 'adequate' rating for that reason.

Towards the later evening, there was also a little premiere... The kids gave us two hours of free evening time today, which we naturally accepted with gratitude. Thanks to Netflix and some small snacks, we had the opportunity to see the city in the dark. It is understandable that this included a visit to Hooters No.1 and a few other bars. Of course, we didn't want to overburden the kindness of our children and therefore we were back at the hotel at the agreed time...in the great hope that this will be appropriately appreciated.

In this sense: Cheers to our children! Bye!