Mom is a very devoted Phillies fan. As a birthday gift this year, my brother (who does not read my blog) and I took her to Clearwater, FL to see a spring training game!
It was a quick weekend trip. We went from shivering in the PHL economy parking lot on a Friday morning to this:
Can you even imagine? Do not let the people in their long sleeved shirts fool you. It was WARM. This Jersey girl never stayed on the gulf coast before and holy cow, I was missing out. The ambience was completely different. It was almost islandy. The sand on the (free) beach was velvety-soft, the water was very nice for it being mid-March, and the best part was seeing the sun set over the gulf. LOOK AT THIS:
We stayed at the BeachView hotel and it was true to its name. It’s one of the few mom-and-pop owned hotels left in a sprawl of giant corporate resorts that are being built in the wake of Hurricane Helene in September.
But the main event was the Phillies game. We arrived when the gates opened to take in as much as we could. BayCare Ballpark is located in a residential neighborhood in Clearwater, and is about the size of a minor league park. But the atmosphere inside resembled a giant tailgate, right down to the whole-ass tiki bar inside of the park which remained open for two hours after the game ended.
Even though we did not get to meet any players before the game (Mom staked out a spot near the dugout), the entire regular-season roster played. The game was so much fun and the Phillies tied Detroit 2-2. I didn’t know that in spring training, there are no extra innings. Games just…end. Okay, great! More time for drinking I guess!
It seemed like the entire town was a playground for Phillies fans. People wore their gear everywhere all weekend long. It was a happy mini spring break for everyone.
We chose ate a LOT of seafood this trip and all of the restaurants were fantastic. Here’s the quick list of restaurants:
Crabby’s Bar & Grille
Salty’s Island Bar & Grille
Clear Sky Beachside
Benedict’s
Barefoot Beach House – for morning coffee. 🙂
We had a tough time finding flights into Tampa that fit our very tight schedule so we ended up flying in and out of Orlando. We rented a car to make the drive to Tampa. After years of not renting a car and relying on rideshares/public transportation/Disney transportation to get around I may be seeing the light on this. It was a lot more convenient and less expensive than it would have been to Uber all around. Thank to John for being the driver and navigating us across Tampa Bay a few times.
This gloomy photo was a harbinger of our flight back, which was delayed multiple times and flew through some terrific thunderstorms and turbulence. We drove home from the airport in one of the worst downpours I’ve navigated in years, and after dropping the other two off I didn’t make it home until 2am. :/
This is a trip I’d love to take again in the future. I’d build in some more planning time to be certain (this was butt-clenchingly impromptu) so that we could fly into Tampa, stay an extra day or two so that I could have a beach day, and stay more inland. While I adored the gulf view, Saturday night in Clearwater Beach was very noisy and the sounds of motorcycles and muscle cars revving, honking, and cruising down the streets stretched deep into the night. That mostly had to do with the onset of spring breakers.
It was the perfect trip to bring a little bit of summer into the last days of winter.
