Monday, October 30, 2017

Epic Vacation Day 4 - Dunedin

The town that my in laws have their condo is called Dunedin.  The first few months, in my head, I called it 'Dune-den'. It is not pronounced Dune-den.  It is prounounced, 'Done-Eden'.  This has taken me some getting used to.  And I kept thinking to myself, what kind of town calls itself Dun- for Done in America. On occasion I say that I am D-U-N done, like stick a fork in me Done.   But still, it strikes me odd.  Anyway, I figured on this day, we'd explore the town, go to the Beach.  My goal was to go to the Beach at Sunset, so I could take pictures of the sunset at Florida's west coast, and then hit a sunrise on Florida's East Coast.  It didn't quite work out.

For one, it rained most of the day on Tuesday.  
We'd gotten home too late on Monday to go find the beach or a sunset.  

So we had a leisurely morning, which involved Laundry, because dang.
As it turns out, the four of us can go through a lot of laundry when we travel for four days straight.
It was also raining.
It's a good time to do laundry, in the rain.

But as we approached lunchtime, I felt the need to actually get out.
I wanted seafood, real beach fare.
And there was a break in the clouds.  


So we headed into Dunedin.  
There was a cute pub that I thought Eric would love. 
And a nifty doggie mural on the side of a building near a dog friendly advertised bar. 
Turns out the main part of town is super cute, it reminds me of Petoskey. 


We drove through town, I just wanted to find the water.  
We'd been inside all day, I'd hoped to find the beach, but it was raining off and on.  Glad I was in my car.  Turns out Dunedin is just down the way from Clearwater. 


Welcome to Dunedin!  
Guess it's a Scottish type town.   At least, judging by the Great Scot on the Welcome board. 


This was my view from the place we chose for lunch.  
It was called Bon Appetit, and was at the very edge of the street ending right in the water. 


My three sweetboy dates.  This restaurant reminded me of Rick's Cafe Boatyard.
It was classy, could be a nice date spot, but we ate outside, which wasn't as fancy, and that was fine with me.  It was still nice, and the weather for the moment, was perfect. 


The fanciest hot dog in the state of Florida.  


Jake got a super swanky peanut butter sandwich.  They even cut the crusts off for him. 


Mommy got some of the 'soup of the day' a nice southern gumbo.  
Oh yeah. Shrimp and sausage.  I can deal with that.  
Looked pretty too. 


Christopher got a cheeseburger.  
This made the fourth consecutive day he'd had a cheeseburger.  
He decided, over lunch, that his New Goal for Vacation was going to be to eat a Cheeseburger every single day.  Given what I recall of Club Med, I think that may be able to be arranged. 


Mommy's Grouper special. 
Apparently, Grouper comes from the Gulf.  So it's caught FRESH.  Right here. 
So when in Rome...
So I have decided to eat as much of the local fare as I can.  
This pan fried grouper sandwich was scrumptious!  
Even the tartar sauce was homemade from scratch. 


As we left town, we found this pretty dolphin leaping off the corner, like one of the Bison floating around Indy.  

Earlier in the day, I had told the boys we would go swimming.  When it finally stopped raining, Jacob said, "I want to go to the pool." I asked him, "Do you even know where the pool is?"  
Jacob replied, "Yes. Far."  
I giggled, for he had no more idea where the neighborhood pool was any more than I did.  We looked for it after lunch, and found nothing.  As it turns out, I wrote on FB about the conversation with Jacob, and so a reply from Aunt Teri came through, and she said, "About 20 paces out the back door."  Well, we hadn't gone out the back door, let alone opened up the window back there, we had stayed out of the the back porch and door, because there was some of Aunt Teri's stuff back there, and I didn't want it disturbed.  But upon reading that, I took a look.  
And there it was , the pool was 20 paces out our back door. Ha!   
So I showed the kids, and after flushes and whatnot, we decided to go for a swim before dinner.  I didn't eat much for dinner, since I'd had a decent size lunch, we grabbed some turkey and bread, to make sandwiches.  In theory we were planning to watch the sunset, but with all the clouds and misty rain, we decided to stay put through the sunset.  The kids were happy watching tv after our swim anyway.  


After a day indoors, the boys couldn't wait to go for a Swim at Grandma's new neighborhoood pool.  New to us anyway.  


Jacob has begun to venture out from me.  And he doesn't drown.  He makes me nervous though. 
They boys were having a great time, playing with pool noodles they found, and laughing. 
Their laughter is the Best Sound! 


Mommy has happy vacation toes.  
I hadn't had much time to do my toes before we headed out.  On Tuesday, I did. 
I did them while we had a break watching TV with Grandma and Grandpa.  
They are a lavender color with neutral tan and peach seashells, a hostess exclusive from June 2015, perfect toes for a Floridian vacation. 


And lastly, this pretty plant grows happily outside of Mom's window.  
It is called Ixora, also known as West Indian Jasmine.  
Beautiful.  
And after a long day, an evening swim was a perfect way to end.  

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