Beautiful St. Pete's

We’re still “on the hook” in Vinoy Basin on St. Petersburg’s beautiful waterfront. There's lots of parks and fountains; the trees are lit with little white lights at night - I love it. SO different from where we're usually anchored. No updates to share, just some pictures of the area. This is the anchorage we’re in. It’s called Vinoy Basin because that pink building in the background is the Vinoy Resort and Hotel.

We learned a little about the history of it from the trolley driver. It was built in the 1920s when a suite cost $15 per day which included three meals - those were the days! During World War II it was used to house troops during training and the hotel kitchens were used to train kitchen staff for the military. Then it was vacant for 13 years and was nearly demolished. It was rescued in the 1980s and restored to its' original beauty.

There’s a free red trolley that just goes to The Pier and back and another blue one, “The Looper" (we got a kick out of that). It gives you a narrated 30-min. tour of the downtown for a quarter. Here’s a few more sights we saw along the way:

This is the view from the 5th floor observation floor of The Pier. It's a long walk so the free trolley ride was very welcome!

This is a view of our anchorage at Vinoy Basin from the observation deck.

This was a new one on us, a floating chapel. It's rented out for weddings and starts at $795 per outing. It has stained glass windows and everything but doesn't look at all seaworthy. I'd love to see it out on the water.

We’re especially enjoying the 72 degree day after seeing on the internet that Wisconsin is having horribly cold weather. Green Bay was ONE degree with winds high enough to make the wind chill about 40 BELOW ZERO! Schools were closed to keep the little ones from freezing going to and from school. It seems so strange to hear about that and here we are, sitting on the boat in shorts enjoying perpetual summer. Sometimes it doesn't seem possible that we actually brought our boat all the way from Wisconsin and are now in Florida – almost surreal but we like it.

This was a little joke from the trolley driver. He said this the newest State Bird - Florida Cranes! They seem to be quite abundant.

This is Paul getting a drink at the Fountain of Youth. We'll have to wait and see if it worked!

We even got to see a fireworks show last night. We don't know what the occasion was but it was very cool! We know Ginger is getting a bit deaf as the noise didn't faze her that much! We plan to be here until Saturday or so. More later... love to all.