The Traveling Steve's

July stay-cation in Tampa 2

After a good night’s sleep in the Tampa Grand Hyatt, we took a morning nature walk around the property.  Hyatt provides Platinum members a 2pm checkout which is nice, so you don’t feel so rushed to vacate your room.  We skipped the breakfast brunch, and had a couple ‘power bars’ which Steve always carries with him.

We walked down by the Tampa Bay, and found a most comfortable spot on the hotel dock just outside the pool and beach area.IMG_3834IMG_3836 IMG_3830Overlooking the water and viewing the wildlife, it was quite a tranquil way to spend a few morning moments.

After checking out, we took a drive to Clearwater Beach before heading to the Orlando airport.  We had booked an upcoming Halloween weekend stay at the Hyatt Regency Clearwater Beach, and wanted to see it up close to make sure we wanted to stay there.  Boy are we glad we went by there!  We had read very mixed reviews about this property, and our quick drive by visit confirmed our suspicions!  For one, the photo of the hotel on the website is heavily cropped to make it look like it’s the only hotel in the area.  What you can’t see from the photo (and we read about from the reviews) is the construction going on next door, which is not only an eyesore, but is very noisy.  The Hyatt website shows a beautiful hotel with a pristine uncrowded beach and no high rise buildings or construction next to it in the photo below.  Compare that to the actual photo I took below that, and you’ll see that marketing photos can be very deceiving, if not down right deceitful.

Hyatt-Regency-Clearwater-Beach-Exterior-Waterview (2)

IMG_3849

The beach area was very crowded, as was the street traffic along the beach, and mixed in with some not so nice motels/hotels and tacky tourist shops, it made for a not at all potential relaxing getaway. IMG_3852 IMG_3853

I cancelled the Halloween weekend at the Clearwater Hyatt, and will book somewhere else  instead.

After heading out of the heavy traffic in the Clearwater Beach area, we heading toward Orlando airport, where we stayed at the Hyatt Orlando airport for the night, as I have an early flight in the morning for work.  We love the Hyatt MCO airport hotel; it’s not only super convenient located inside the airport terminal, but the staff are wonderful, the runway or atrium views are terrific, and we enjoy having dinner in McCoy’s restaurant there.

It’s so nice standing on the hotel balcony and watching the planes take off.  IMG_3863We were overlooking the Southwest/Delta/Virgin Atlantic/British Airways and others side, so we could see several jumbo jets IMG_3864heading off to Europe as well as dozens of domestic flights.  Virgin Atlantic has some four 747 jumbos taking off each evening, IMG_3865and British has a couple 777 flights, plus Lufthansa’s 747, TAM’s Airbus 330, LAN, and others.

Weekends come and go so fast, but it sure makes it nice doing mini staycations!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *