Wes & Erica's Vacation Photo Album - Country Club Plaza (Kansas City) - April 2022

Wes & I have been married for 7 years!! 💖💟👫💘💕 We went out for a nice dinner on our actual anniversary date and took a quick weekend trip to Kansas City for more celebrations. (Side note: Dallas, TX was my favorite quick weekend road trip destination, but Kansas City, MO & KS has overtaken it; just as much fun stuff to do, restaurants, culture & art but with waaaaay less traffic and construction.) We went to the Country Club Plaza shops in search of a new leather and/or bomber jacket for me. Wes bought me one ages ago when we first started dating and it finally got to the point where it desperately had to be replaced. I should have known that the shops would be showing their spring looks and there wouldn't be any jackets for sale but oh well. 🤷 While we were there, we ate at a bunch of restaurants (my sole reason for travelling) and visited the Sistine Chapel art exhibit (more on that in next week's blog post).

This was our third trip to the Country Club Plaza but our first time to actually spend a day walking around. The Plaza has a mix of high-end shops, restaurants, boutiques, and a lot of outdoor art. We went into a few of the shops but mostly just window shopped. The only things we bought were for the dogs. LOL A majority of the shops close at 7pm so if you really want to shop & explore, it will probably take two days of walking around. 

Since it was springtime/Easter season, there were lots of rabbit statues everywhere. They were each named, which I thought was cute. There was also a "Heart of KC" exhibit where storefronts each had a heart painted in the theme of what they sell. 

Outdoor art is definitely cool, but the highlight of our vacations is always the food. 🍖🍔☕🍪🍗 Our first stop was lunch at Shake Shack. My cousin (who lives in Australia) recommended that we eat at Shake Shack when we took our road trip to Las Vegas about 7 years ago and that recommendation always stuck with me. We ate at the one on the Strip and it has been my favorite burger place since. Too bad there isn't one in Oklahoma. 😔 Earlier that week, Wes & I had a conversation where we ranked fries in order of preference. Crinkle cut fries were on the bottom of my list. I had forgotten that Shake Shack's fried are crinkle cut and I was momentarily disappointed but theirs are sooooo good. I suppose crinkle cut fries aren't the worse anymore. Our lunch was so awesome. I would rank it as the best meal we had the entire weekend. 😋

I've decided that two things I need on each & every vacation is a tokodoki brand Unicorno figurine and boba tea. We got my Unicorno at Barnes & Noble and then headed to Bruu for boba tea. Their drink special was the Anchan strawberry milk tea with rainbow jellies. I had no idea what an Anchan strawberry tastes like but the drink in the picture was really pretty so I ordered it. It was delicious!! 😋 Probably the best flavored milk tea I've had in a while. The rainbow jellies weren't as good as traditional boba but still very tasty. Bruu didn't have any dairy-free options, so Wes went and got a cold brew at Made in KC Marketplace. It was a neat shop that had a café, bar, and all local goods. It had the cutest mugs and t-shirts, jewelry, candles, etc. Great place for souvenir shopping, but we didn't buy anything (we suck as tourists LOL).

For dinner, we went to Fogo de Chão. I was unaware of this highly popular steakhouse, but Wes said it was top notch. Oklahoma has Texas de Brazil so I was at least familiar with the Brazilian churrascaria concept. Maybe it was because we went on prom weekend and maybe it was because the restaurant was insanely busy, but I was NOT impressed. The food was similar to Texas de Brazil; it was good but not worth all the hype. The only things that stood out were that the lamb and chicken were marinated in a different (maybe tastier) blend of spices and they served this amazing grilled mozzarella dipped in honey.  Wes really liked our meal. I did too; I am not saying anything bad about the yummy grilled meats, but the vibe of the restaurant really ruined it for me. 

We had made reservations for 8:15pm but had to wait a while to get seated. Strike one. The restaurant itself was filthy. Strike two. The bathrooms were a disaster and there was food and trash on the dining room floor. The marketplace salad bar wasn't fully stocked, and our waitress forgot to bring out one of the complimentary side dishes. 😒 And, the bar was out of gin so they couldn't make the cocktail I ordered (a featured cocktail on the menu... so I was unsure why or how they could be out of the essential ingredient to make it). Strike three. After dinner, we headed back to the Intercontinental hotel. This has been our hotel for each of our Kansas City trips. Its very nice and literally across the street from the Plaza. You can park in the hotel parking garage and walk, which is the only way to do it since parking and driving in the Plaza is a nightmare. 

Before we went, we took a look at the Plaza directory and picked out the restaurants we wanted to try. One was Sweet Kiss Brigadeiro (a Brazilian bakery). We wanted to go there for breakfast and coffee so that was the plan for the next morning. We waited around until it opened... then waited about five minutes more... and then another few minutes. After a while, we decided that either its hours needed updating or it was out-of-business. So instead, we went to Messenger Coffee Co. for breakfast. We both wanted a chorizo burrito but they were out of chorizo so I got a chocolate chip toffee cookie & a chai tea and Wes just got a cold brew. My cookie was really good, but the chai had too much cinnamon in it. It was my fault, the barista asked if I wanted cinnamon and I said yes. Wes said his cold brew was good but not as good as the one from Made in KC Marketplace.

We also went to the Sistine Chapel exhibit but that will be for another post. We drove about an hour out of our way to go to Auntie Rita's Jamaican restaurant for lunch on our way home. We had planned to go there when we drove to Lincoln for the Ghost concert, but I was horribly sick and we had to skip. We made our way to downtown Salina, KS and everything looked closed. 😓 I checked and double checked the restaurant's hours online and it said they were open, so we parked and walked in. We were literally the only customers in the entire place. It was 3pm on a Sunday so admittedly a weird time to eat but still... I've never eaten at a restaurant where there was no one else in the dining room. The guy behind the counter was extremely friendly and gave us some pointers on what to order since we've never had Jamaican food and were from out of town. I got the BBQ pork and Wes got the jerk pork meal. We got the "regular" size and the portions were ginormous!! I can't imagine what a large meal consists of. We both really liked the food and I even ate the plantains (which I don't like). Wes said that he liked that the coleslaw was marinated in vinegar and blend of spices instead of traditional coleslaw dressing.

Overall, a fun and appetizing weekend getaway. Happy anniversary 💗 and looking forward to 70 more years of being married. 

Wes & Erica's vacation photo album - The Gateway Arch - November 2021

The last stop on our road trip was the Gateway Arch and National Park. 🌲 I've never visited but Wes did when he was a child. He says he doesn't remember much so it was sort of like he was seeing it for the first time with me. We bought a day pass for parking downtown and thought there would be enough to do to fill a day but downtown St. Louis wasn't as touristy as I initially thought. Ok... I take that back, there were a ton of "family fun" attractions, and the Cardinals stadium was a big deal, but I don't like baseball or children. LOL 

We did walk around City Garden, which I really enjoyed. It is a large sculpture park in the middle of downtown. It was a little strange because it was all office buildings, parking garages, apartments and then .... gigantic pieces of art. The roads around it were blocked off so visitors could walk freely. There was a coffee shop that we really wanted to go to in the center of City Garden but it was temporarily closed. 😞 We strolled along the garden and saw all of the sculptures except for the 2 LED ones that weren't turned on in the daytime. My favorite was the two white rabbits (named Untitled) and Wes liked the thimble bench (don't remember what it is called).

We wandered around downtown a bit on our way to the Gateway Arch. Nothing too exciting. We wanted to eat at Carmine's Steak House last minute but we were severely underdressed and didn't have reservations. (And I'm not even sure if we were hungry. LOL Wes just said he's read good things about that restaurant and wanted to check it out). I wanted to see the Old Cathedral but there were tons of cars in the parking lot. Normally not a problem but there were also signs posted stating that the parking lot was for church goers only. Since the parking lot was full, I assumed it was time for mass and I didn't want to interrupt. So, we decided that we would come back after our tour of the arch. Turns out all of the cars were driven by sinners because I looked up mass times on the cathedral's website and mass was already celebrated at 7:30am that morning. The cathedral's website also told me that it closed early and we wouldn't be able to see if after our tour. 😔

When we were walking around the park, I chattered on about how this was the first National Park we've visited together. Wes kept giving me a weird look and I literally just now realized that we went to Carlsbad Caverns AND the Grand Canyon (albeit briefly) on our wedding road trip. 😬 Ooops... this is the third National Park we've visited together. I have the worst memory nowadays. This is why I must keep extensive journals/blogs about our vacations! 

The National Park was pretty but not the most interesting (or large). We walked along the Mississippi River--which was cool but I think driving over it on the Illinois bridge was much more breathtaking... but that could have just been the architecture of the bridge--, both the North & South lawns, and everything else that was on the map. It was all beautifully landscaped and it was a nice sunny day for walking around (but too sunny for pictures, Wes said; he's always looking for a way to get out of selfies with me!) We still had time to kill before our tour of the Gateway Arch but we had done and seen everything in the National Park, so we decided to head in early. I bought tickets for us to take a tram ride to the top of the arch on the North Tram at 3:20pm. I thought maybe they could fit us on an earlier tram if we showed up early and no one else had bought tickets. We walked to the screens showing all the rides & times and it showed that the North Tram was closed today. 😳 I asked the ticket counter about it and the guy said that they randomly close one of the trams, which is completely normal, and he'll just put us on the South Tram. Rides for the South Tram go at 3:15pm or 3:25pm and we could just pick whichever one we wanted. He must be used to panicked tourists because he was super causal about it. 

Since we were there early, we chose the 3:15pm ride. When it was our turn in line, the tour guide said there were a bunch of families ahead of us so that time slot filled up already. She would just put us on the 3:25pm one. Then she found out that the 3:25pm ride was booked with a large tour group so we got to go on our own private tram ride... at 3:20pm as originally planned. LOL It was super cool to get to go by ourselves! Our tour guide was really soft-spoken and I couldn't really hear her so I don't have any fun facts about the arch to retell. All I remember is that we sat in a capsule that uses some sort of special geometry to keep it upright as we rode up the arch, and it sways a bit. There were two tour guides at the observation deck and they were pretty shocked when only two people came out of the ride. One of them was like, well, do you have any questions? We said that we just wanted to look at the view and he seemed relieved that he could take a break from repeating his presentation for the one millionth time that day.

The view was amazing. And it was great that we could walk around and take our time without other tourists around. We could see what seemed like all of St. Louis. The Mississippi River on the other side wasn't as spectacular but still pretty. I sort of feel like we wasted a day aimlessly meandering around downtown and the National Park but the arch was definitely worth the trip. 

Wes & Erica's vacation photo album - The House on the Rock - November 2021

Back in 2018 or '19, a woman from a book club I once belonged to suggested that I read American Gods by Neil Gaiman, which I read & enjoyed but don't remember too much about it. One of the only scenes I remember from the book was when Shadow and Mr. Wednesday go to the giant carousel in The House on the Rock. Since every place the characters went to is a real place in the United States, I decided that I needed to visit this giant carousel and curious house. 🏠 Fast forward a few years to when Audrey invited me to her wedding. The House on the Rock is in Spring Green, Wisconsin... only two and a half hours away from where we'd be attending the wedding. Of course we're going to take a trip to the house!!

I think I (or Mr. Gaiman's imaginatively fantastical writing) overly hyped up the house because it wasn't as great as I pictured it would be. 😞 The house is divided into three sections. Section 1 is the original house and completely worth seeing. I would visit it again and again if I could. Parts of Section 2 are interesting and Section 3 is a waste of time. 

A bit of history (from what I remember from The Alex Jordan Center exhibit) - Alex Jordan was a super rich kid who went on a picnic to "the rock" with his family. He loved the area so much that he decided that he would buy it and build a house on it. He started with the Original House and gardens (Section 1). The house is fully functioning and he mostly used it to host parties. He designed the rooms to be small and intimate so his guests could enjoy good conversation. There are dangerous winding steps and low ceilings throughout the house so I'm not sure how his party guests survived their soirees. When we visited, the low ceilings had patches of carpet so it wouldn't be as painful when you inevitably bumped your head. LOL The house literally is on a rock and is built with rocks so the temperature inside matches the temperature outside. It was freezing! ❆ One of the museum employees told us that the rocks also retain heat so it is uncomfortably hot in the summertime. Glad we visited in the fall!

The Original House is decorated with antique furniture and collectibles. Mr. Jordan loved Japanese lanterns, a particular narrow necked vase and a wooden panel carved with an intricate floral motif, and these were seen throughout the house. He was also obsessed with musical instruments, especially self playing ones (like in a music box). 🎵🎺Since he had a bunch of money, he hired staff to turn his musical invention sketches & ideas into reality. There were about 20 or 30 (I don't remember what the tour guide said) self playing orchestras throughout the entire house. ♯🎻🎹Each cost a token to operate. I think we listened/watched them all and they were one of the highlights of the house. 🎼♭🎶

The other highlight of the house was the Infinity Room. It is built on the edge of the house and extends well over the mountains. 😲 The entire room is a huge window that overlooks the mountains and it looks like an optical illusion. The Original House and Infinity Room are both in Section 1 of the house.

Mr. Jordan hired a huge staff to build his house, assemble his self playing orchestras and to collect random junk for him. (Okay, maybe "junk" is a bit harsh but it was a bunch of weird and random stuff.) He was very creative and had a "go big or go home" attitude. He quickly amassed soooooo much stuff that he had to build Section 2 and then Section 3 to display it all. Section 2 has The Hall of Music, which is exactly as it sounds. Most of the musical instruments are there. Wes's favorite part was The Red Room. A huge self playing orchestra with all sorts of invented instruments played music from The Nutcracker. The floor, walls and ceiling were covered in red velvet and had dim lighting. A majority of Sections 2 and 3 were red and had dim lighting. It took my eyes a while to adjust and I did not like it (I have HORRIBLE night vision).

The Carousel Room is also in Section 2. The carousel is the world's largest. 🎠 Mr. Jordan collected animals from decommissioned carousels. Then he got bored of them and started fusing the different animals together. The gigantic carousel was pretty awesome. In the book, the characters get on a special animal and it takes them to a different realm. I knew that wasn't real (obviously) but I was hoping the carousel was open to the public but it wasn't for riding... just for show and for selfies. 

Section 3 was a mess. Per the house's website, the house takes at least 3 hours to walk through (it took us about 4). The house is one way and there is no way to skip a section or return to a previous section. After marveling at Section 1 and mostly enjoying Section 2, both Wes & I were ready to go back to the hotel. But, no, we had to walk through Section 3. Section 3 was mostly dolls and miniatures. The first couple of miniatures were neat -- look a circus scene! 🎪oh look at this menagerie! these ones move! -- but it got very tedious very quickly. Toward the end of it, we were just walking through to get done with it and we barely looked at anything on display. Several of the dolls were creepy and it was dark, so that entire part was pretty eerie (which was probably the mood they were trying to accomplish). Section 3 reminded me of a cluttered antique store or a messy garage sale, neither of which I like. 😒

Once we finally got out of the house, we walked along the Japanese-inspired landscaped gardens before exiting. The gardens were very serene. Wes commented on how clean the ponds were. The water was crystal clear and there was lots of algae and plant life. I LOVED that the house was in the mountains. The trees were just starting to change colors and everything looked like a perfect autumn scene. I've never really seen mountains so I can't really judge, but I think Spring Green, WI has the most gorgeous ones. 🍂 It took a while for my eyes to acclimate to light again. I think they purposefully saved the exterior grounds for last so you could readjust to sunlight after spending 4+ hours in a black and red house.  

I'm glad we went to The House on the Rock (not sure if Wes feels the same way, he was over it way before I was) but I'm not sure if I would recommend it or go back again. If there were just tickets for Section 1, I 100% recommend visiting but the full tour is too much to do in a day. I lost my sense of wonder after seeing the 5th carousel and 100th miniature set. 😬It would probably be better to see a section per day so you can remain surprised by all the different things . Going through the entire house in one long tour ended up being more of a chore than a fun day at the museum. 

Wes & Erica's vacation photo album - Catoosa, OK & Kansas City, MO - October 2021

Wes and I just went on a week-long road trip!! 🚙 We left Oklahoma for Iowa via Missouri/Kansas and came home via Wisconsin and Missouri (and sort of Illinois but we only stopped for gas and boba). It was the first actual vacation (not counting the mini-trip to Tulsa in September) we've taken since my birthday trip to Tampa & St. Petersburg, FL in 2019. Since this was a mega trip with tons of pictures, I'll post in sections.  

Last year on the British quiz show, QI, they had a short segment about the whale. I knew there was a gigantic cartoonish blue whale somewhere in Oklahoma along Route 66, but I didn't know much more about it or even what it looked like. I decided that we needed to pay it a visit after it was featured internationally. 

I expected the whale to be on a lake or on the outskirts of town...I was wrong. It is literally on the side of the highway in the middle of town. LOL It was made as an anniversary gift. It looks like it was originally a play area for children. You can slide down the whale's fins and climb up to its tail to use as a diving board. You can also climb up into the whale's head and look out some portholes. We didn't do any of that since it was chilly and the pond that the whale sits in was grungy & dirty. 

The Blue Whale of Catoosa is cute and worth the visit if you're driving thru. We stopped in Oklahoma Joe's barbeque for lunch. We went to the Joe's (another barbeque restaurant in Kansas City a few years ago) and I thought this was the same place, like a franchise, but it wasn't. The one in Catoosa wasn't  near as good as the one in Kansas City. I got their award winning "best baked beans on the planet." It was, I think black, kidney and pinto beans, with bits of pulled pork swimming in a soup of tangy barbeque sauce. It was too much for me; I'm used to simple baked beans out of a can.

After lunch, we headed on to Kansas City. We had some time to kill so we walked around The Plaza before dinner. We've visited before but it was at nighttime so we didn't really get to see much of the architecture. This time we went when the sun was still up so I got to admire the Spanish-style buildings. And, I got my Unicorno figurine -- my must-have travelling companion. LOL 

We had dinner at Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken. Normally, we try to go to restaurants we haven't been to before but Wes loved the chicken the last time so we decided to go a second time. It was just as good! The chicken is dredged in a slurry of buttermilk, cornstarch and spices instead of the traditional egg and flour breading. Then it's fried in peanut oil. So yummy!! Wes got greens & fries for his sides and he said they were good. I got coleslaw & fried okra and both were just so-so. It doesn't matter because no one cares about the sides. 😂 The chicken is the star of the meal!! Kansas City is so neat and I wanted to do more but I had a long drive ahead of me the next day so we turned in to the hotel after dinner for an early night. 

We had breakfast at the Opera House Food & Coffee Emporium on our way out. It was such a cool place. It is a large restaurant with a coffee bar, bakery, bar and restaurant. I had the best matcha tea latte! 🍵 I ordered the biscuits and gravy for breakfast. The biscuits were ... different. They were dense and made from either corn meal or some sort of grains. Luckily, they were smothered in delicious spicy sausage gravy.

The restaurant is in City Market... so naturally I needed to take a stroll around, since we were already there. City Market is a ginormous open air market. It was mostly produce vendors but there were a few artisans. There were also shops and a steamboat museum. We walked around for about an hour but I could have stayed and explored all morning! I wish we had access to a kitchen and another day in Kansas City because I wanted to buy so much of the fresh produce and local foods. I am adding it on the travel list for us to return to! But enough of Kansas City... we had to drive to our next stop - Iowa City!! More on that later!

Wes & Erica go to Tampa, FL, part 3

Well, actually this post will be about sightseeing in St. Petersburg, Florida (sightseeing in Tampa was last week's blog post, here and here) ...and mainly pictures from the Dalí Museum. Earlier this year, I heard an advert on the radio about St. Petersburg & Clearwater. One of the main attractions was the Salvador Dalí museum and I was determined to go. I fell in love with Dalí's art when I studied abroad in Spain many moons ago. My friends and I went to his museum in Figueres and it captivated my imagination. The Dalí Museum did not disappoint. We ended up doing a couple of other things while we were in St. Petersburg.

We decided to go to the museum on a Sunday to experience the "Mimosas and Masterpieces" brunch. Its supposed to be an artisanal brunch using local ingredients that are currently in season. Sadly, it wasn't even half as great as I thought it would be. First of all, the waitress couldn't explain the specials to us, which was crazy because there is no brunch menu... all that we had to choose from was what the chef decided to whip up that morning and she had no idea what it was. 😒 Secondly, the service was extremely slow. And thirdly, our food was just meh. Brunch was: a grilled cheese sandwich that was soaked in olive oil and used a Spanish cheese (Manchego, maybe) that wasn't melted all the way, an average mimosa and the only thing that was super tasty - a artichoke bisque with a walnut pesto swirl.

After brunch we explored the museum. We started outside in the garden, which had a few sculptures, then wandered around the ginormous gift shop. There were two special exhibits at the museum: a virtual reality tour of a few of Dalí's paintings (we put on virtual reality headsets and followed these dots to "go into" Dalí's paintings; it was super cool but we had to take off our glasses so I couldn't see the dots very well and I suck at video games anyway so I would have had a hard time following the dots with or without my glasses. I think Wes had a much better time at it than I did) and the Midnight in Paris exhibit, which was a collection of artwork from Dalí's contemporaries in the Surrealist movement. Wes really enjoyed Midnight in Paris but I instantly learned that I'm not a fan of surrealism... I apparently just like Dalí's art and no one else's. LOL

The main galleries were absolutely memorizing. I felt like I stood and gazed at each work for an hour but we actually went through it all at a remarkably quick pace. We were only in the main galleries for about two hours and I expected the museum to take the entire day. There was a ton of Dalí's work, many smaller paintings and drawings and eight masterworks. The masterworks were huge wall-sized paintings (his famous ones: Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln and The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus among others). My favorite piece is Sentimental Colloquy.

After the museum, we walked around St. Petersburg, did a little souvenir shopping (and A LOT of window shopping, it was Sunday so a bunch of the cute boutiques were closed) and sat at the marina at Demens Landing Park, which was the closest we could get to the ocean because we were not dressed for the beach. We ended up at the Sundial mall for lunch. There were a few upscale shops at Sundial but I wasn't feeling posh enough to go in them. We had lunch at Locale Market. Wes got a burger and I got tacos. Lunch was much much yummier than brunch was.

Our evening activity was Enchant Christmas at Tropicana Field. When I was researching activities to do, this came up as a "Christmas market" so I was thinking it was a local craft show. Oh no, it is so much more. There was a craft show (which was actually quite disappointing; no unique vendors. I think I've become a craft show snob because I've done so many myself) and food court (think gross concession stand food) but the main attraction was the light maze. I'm not a "get in the Christmas spirit" kind of person, but even I was impressed by the light maze. It was really rad and completely  made up for the lackluster craft show and food. The maze took up the entirety of the stadium and featured HUGE lighted snowflakes, Christmas trees and reindeer. All beautiful,colorful and full of holiday cheer. Wes noted that they used non-traditional Christmas colors so there wasn't an onslaught of red and green, which he appreciated. The premise was that all of Santa's reindeer got loose and we had to walk around the maze to find them. About every five minutes or so "snow" fell inside the maze. It was extremely busy so everyone just bumbled around instead of following a path to the reindeer. But it wasn't really a maze (more like a huge open space with some guidelines as to where to go) so it was okay to wander wherever. We walked around quite a bit and found all nine reindeer.

St. Petersburg makes for a good day trip but I wouldn't suggest planning for more than a day as there aren't very many tourist attractions. Its mostly shopping and dining. We spent two days in Tampa but we probably could have done everything in one day. I used to over plan for our trips and we were more exhausted than relaxed after a vacation. I've dialed it back and I only book one tourist attraction per day. It was nice to have the downtime but I sort of feel like we spent more time in the hotel than we did out and about, which was a tad bit boring. I need to find the medium between "aggressively sightseeing" and "lazy tourist". All in all, I think we had a nice time in Florida. We both really enjoyed the food (I've never had Cuban food until visiting). I'm sure the weather was supposed to be nice but I thought it was way too hot, especially for December! One last thing to note is that the Ubers were exceptionally clean, like I don't think I've ever ridden in vehicles as clean as the ones we got. So that's it for birthday #35, looking forward to 2020!

Wes & Erica go to Tampa, FL, part 2

December was a trying month (but we don't need to talk about that..), regardless, I am determined to travel on my birthday no matter what, and I wanted to celebrate another completed craft show season, so off to Florida we went!! 🌞 I think we did a little less than we usually do when we travel but we both still enjoyed the trip. We only went to three activities -

Coppertail Brewing Night Market-
Coppertail is a local brewery in Ybor, FL. Every second Friday evening, the brewery opens its back parking lot to crafters and artisans for a night market. This was a really fun event with good customer turnout, Oklahoma breweries take note (and allow RagsReborn to be a vendor 😉). There was a good variety of vendors--about 30-40 of them--and they were all handmade. The weather was amazing - 70℉, cool with no wind. The only weird thing was that not many of the vendors were selling Florida themed stuff. I was surprised there wasn't any tshirts, stickers or any of the other usual crafty items with the state outline of Florida printed on them. There was a local rescue there with a litter of eight-week old boxer/German shepherd puppies. They were so cute in their Christmas bandannas! There was only one food truck at the market (they preferred that everyone eat in the taproom but it was PACKED and I was too hungry to wait in line). The food truck was a pizza one. They made our pizzas to order in a little portable brick oven. We ordered a margherita pizza but it didn't have basil. I instantly didn't like it for that reason, that and the crust was burnt. We also got beers (of course, we were at a brewery!). Wes ordered a Day Swim, a coffee & vanilla porter that was pretty good and tasted as expected. I got the Florida Special, which was just your average blonde beer. Nothing special about the beers but the night market was worth going to.

Tampa Art Museum-
The art museum was pretty good but also really small. It was only one floor and we went through it all in about an hour. The gift shop was bigger and had more interesting stuff than the museum did. LOL Wes really liked the Greek & Roman vessels and other statuettes (above). He liked the use of the color black in the artifacts. My favorite thing at the museum was the mummy. Well, it was only a sarcophagus. When the explorers found it, there was no mummy inside. I think if there is a mummy in a museum, it will always be my favorite part of the museum. The drawings on the sarcophagus were really detailed and told an intricate story but I've forgotten it now.

The special exhibit at the museum was a collection of Haitian voodoo flags. They were much more colorful and bejeweled than I thought they'd be (but I know literally nothing about Haitian culture or voodoo so who am I to judge). All of the flags were decorated using either beads or sequins. Many of them depicted St. Jacques who was the leader of the Haitian revolution.

The Florida Aquarium-
The aquarium was amazing and completely worth going to if you ever are in Tampa. The place was gigantic with eight different areas to explore. There was a really good variety of animals and sea life to view. We started in the wetlands section and wandered all the way through to the "Dragons of the Sea" section (my favorite), we skipped the splash pad and 4-D movie theater even though they were included in our ticket. We saw everything from birds to jelly fish to lemurs to lobsters. The wetlands section had all of the birds flying free instead of in cages, which I thought was rad even if we got splashed by a hooded merganser duck several times (like literally each time he swam by us) and almost got shat on by a roseate spoonbill bird. LOL Wes's favorite animal - the snowy egret bird - was in the wetlands, too.

A lot of the exhibits were interactive. I got to "pet" a jelly fish, star fish and a sea anemone. I would have also touched a stingray but he didn't swim close enough to me. An aquarium worker randomly brought out a penguin for us to see (but not touch). The aquarium has a few penguins but they aren't on display, yet. They live in the back for now. My favorite creature (and probably my new favorite animal, sorry okapi) was the leafy seadragon. This thing looks insane and astounding at the same time. It was a medium sized seahorse with branches growing out of it! Just look at it!! Extraordinary!

So that's a wrap for Tampa. If you go, try to go on the second Friday of the month so you can visit the night market. Plan to spend several hours at the aquarium (we probably spent 3-4 hours there). We went on a Monday so it wasn't crowded. You can probably skip the art museum. I didn't mention it but we also took a stroll along the Riverwalk. It was a nice two-mile walk. You start at the art museum and end up at Armatage Works. We spent a day in St. Petersburg as well, more on that next week!