I’m sitting here in my jammies on wednesday march 11th, down with yet another cold. jeesh, that’s two of them this winter, unless i had one even earlier and forgot about it. plus there’s the coronavirus, just declared a world-wide pandemic…so it’s time to try to think happy thoughts.
good times in florida…after my run that morning of Tues. Feb. 18th, mom and i drove back to Gulfport Beach where they were having their weekly Gulfport Fresh Market. We were lucky that we happened to be there on Tuesday. It certainly wasn’t a farmers’ market because only about two or three stands sold any produced, but there were many cool things for sale.
we saw this highly unusual house on the way there. i wish i’d gotten out of the car and taken more pictures. in addition to big bright flowers painted all over the house exterior there were also sculptures of flowers as well as…dragonflys? this one on the roof looks like a dragonfly to me. plus look at the size of that yucca!

Here’s a quick look at the market, which was on the same Gulf Blvd. south where we’d been on monday.
In the video i said that big yellow building was a fancy restaurant, but it’s actually an Inn, the Historic Peninsula Inn. i just checked out their website and it was built in 1905, then after WW II was used as a hospital for vets coming back from the war. it was then a nursing home, then a retirement home for men. It almost closed, but luckily somebody bought and restored it. the rooms and suites look really nice plus they’re pet-friendly. plus they also have a restaurant called Isabelle’s and the menu looks delish.
as we wandered past the many booths selling all kinds of stuff we stopped to get some cooling gelato. mmm good.

this lovely green area was tucked between a couple of buildings on the street.

i bought a few souvenirs but in retrospect i wish i’d bought more – the things i got were cute and really reasonably-priced. next time!
we stopped at the Publix to buy food for lunch and sat by our pool enjoying it.

we then ventured over to St. Pete’s Beach. Our aim was the Don Cesar, which i’ve already posted photos of from afar. You can click on the link for the history of the place; it opened in 1928, is on the National Register of Historic Places as well as the National Trust’s Historic Hotels of America. A few movies have been filmed there, or at least on the beach in front of it.
as we drove down the main boulevard on St. Pete Beach it was fairly crazy crowded with traffic. by the time we arrived at the Don Cesar we quickly realized that parking might be challenging. we finally found a place and walked up a zillions steps to the hotel entrance.
and it was…nice. fine. big and fancy. but since we didn’t want to have a cocktail at the bar and had no desire to peruse the goods in the many little shops in the basement, instead we walked out past the huge pool and down to the beach.

We’d stopped At the Don Cesar when our family took a trip to Florida one summer when i was maybe eight years old. i know we couldn’t have afforded to stay so maybe we just admired the pinkness of it.

Mom and I hadn’t brought towels for lying on the beach, so we didn’t linger long.
next stop, my new favorite beach, Pass-a-Grille Beach.
ok then,
mrs. are you kidding me, yet another cold hughes.