En route we made the short detour to Sanibel Island. This was a place I'd longed to see for myself as my US 'parents' spent many happy vacations and retirement months here as 'snowbirds' migrating down from cold New York in the winter months.
It did not disappoint, although we barely scratched the surface. It was busy and hot so we settled for a lovely lunch in a family run roadside cafe called the Over Easy Cafe which specialised in breakfast and brunch dishes.
It was a lovely onward road trip to Tampa, nothing out of the ordinary to see on the way, but gorgeous weather and an endless blue sea. The bridge over the entrance to Tampa Bay, the Sunshine Skyway bridge, was quite spectacular. A week later the bridge was closed due to unusually high winds and storms - we were lucky.
We stayed at the Grand Hyatt on Tampa Bay which was indeed, very grand. A much larger hotel than the others we stayed at and rather impersonal as a result. But it had everything you could possibly want, including two outdoor pools, bars, restaurants and a lovely walkway down to the shoreline where you could watch birds and the sun go down over the bay.