Florida Visit!

Earlier this month I took a trip to Florida to visit friends.  I stayed with my friend Sandra, but was fortunate enough to get to visit with other friends too.  Considering I lived in Tampa for about 17 years, I have quite a few friends there!  

Sandra retired at the beginning of July.  It's very exciting to finally have an old friend who's also retired.  That's the one downside to being able to retire as young as I did.  Most of my old friends are still working.

After Sandra picked me up at the airport, we headed to my favorite sushi joint, Samarai Blue.  It's only about a mile or so from my former house.  We met Alexia and Val there.  The sushi was just as good as I remember it being! 

The mini-me's tagged along on the trip, and considering they are cats.........well, hopefully you get the picture!!!  The caterpillar roll you see on the right is my favorite sushi roll.  Isn't it cute with it's little cream cheese eyes?!?  

After dinner we headed to Sandra's to settle in for the evening.  Her dog Bella is a real cutie pie (and a momma's girl!).  I told Sandra I was determined to get a kiss from Bella before I left.  It took me about four days and a bribe of a dog toy from TJ Maxx, but I finally won her over.  Here she is showing how happy she is with her new toy!!!  What did I tell you.....a real cutie pie!

Sunday we spent a good part of the day shopping.  Our main goal was to find a rain jacket for Sandra to take on our upcoming trip to Bath, England.  I'm happy to stay we had a successful foray to find one.  

Monday we met the girls again and went to see a movie (The Light Between Oceans), which we all enjoyed (and all cried at least a few tears over).  As we were taking Val home, she got a text from her kids that they were going to Grimaldi's for pizza, so we decided to tag along and meet them there. Talk about some GOOD pizza!!!

There was a LOT of good food on this trip.  Not only did we visit Samarai Blue, my favorite place for sushi, but one day we had lunch at Jasmine Thai, which in my opinion has the BEST pineapple fried rice.  And the presentation is so lovely too!  See.........

My last night in town, Sandra and I met another friend, Julie for dinner (yes, as I mentioned before, there was a LOT of good eating on this trip!).  After we dropped Julie off, Sandra stopped at a small local park so I could snap a quick photo of the sunset, which was stunning.

The mini-me's wanted in on the action, but I was a little slow and missed the sun.  It was moving down the horizon VERY quickly!  They said as long as they got to tag along the next time I had sushi, they'd forgive me!  

In less than a week I was on my way back to Asheville, already planning in my mind my next trip down.  I saw on a Facebook post on my news feed that Wicked is going to be back in Tampa in February.  Wicked is my all time favorite musical (I've seen it four times already, twice in Tampa, once on Broadway in New Year, and once in London! - yes I love it THAT much!), so I thought, "Why not see if any of my friends might like to go."  Six of my friends quickly said they were in, so tickets have been bought and I just got them in the mail today!  YEAH!  Looking forward to my next Florida adventure.............