The English Maximalista

The final part of my travel pentalogy details how we turned a severe irritation at the tail end of our trip into a serendipitous extension of our holiday.

Lesson: when Frontier Airlines gives you lemons, make lemonade!

Long story short, upon checking-in for our return flight — 24 hours before it was due to depart — we discovered that the flight was already delayed; it had originally been scheduled to leave at lunchtime on Sunday, but got pushed to 11pm on Sunday night.

Happily, it turned out that Monday was Martin Luther King Day, which meant Mr Maximalista didn’t have to work, otherwise we would have been scrambling to get home. 

Also happily, we were able to make some fun plans with the extra day now at our disposal. Nice to have gotten a heads up the day before, because it would have been supremely annoying to have had to waste an entire day at the airport.

[This has happened to us before, and I can attest it IS supremely annoying!]

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Thankfully this time, it all worked out in our favour. Upon our 9am disembarkation in port at Tampa Bay, we Ubered to the airport car rental facility where, for only $53, we rented a BMW X3 which had just 400 miles on the odometer! 

When deciding what we should do on our spare day in Florida, my only demand was that we visit the Dali Museum in St Pete’s. About twenty years ago, I had been to the old Dali museum, and was dying to visit the new museum that had opened in 2011.

Other than that, I didn’t mind what we did. Although I had complete faith in the knowledge that whatever Mr M wanted to do would be satisfactory to me, since his interests do tend to conveniently align with my own!

The weather was cold, wet, and windy. A good day to drive around and explore the area. Good museum weather, too. And I have to say, the “new” Dali museum did not disappoint. It was wonderful, and we both thoroughly enjoyed it.

Further meaningful to me was the joint Dali – Giacometti retrospective at the museum. Giacometti is my favourite sculptor, and was the subject of the first art exhibition I ever attended as an adult, when my Art History class at Cambridge went on a day trip to the Royal Academy of Art in London.

That field trip was three decades ago, yet I still retain that initial sense of wonderment at Giacometti’s work, even after all this time.

It felt so personal to learn about his friendship with Dali, and to see Giacometti’s sculptures more up-close than one is usually able to get at other museums, without setting off the alarms!

Lunch was gentleman’s choice at the Beach House Waterfront Restaurant on Bradenton Beach. We sat outside on the covered patio, staying warm despite the chill because the Beach House very thoughtfully placed gas heaters outside, so we got to enjoy the full beach experience. It was wonderful.

Mr M ordered fresh lobster, and I ordered the best rice bowl I have ever had in my life. Who knew that seaweed and mango went together so deliciously well with avocado and rice?!

Afterwards, we walked along Bradenton Beach, dipping our toes in the Gulf, which appeared angry yet felt surprisingly warm.

My only complaint was that public parking on the beach next to the restaurant cost THIRTY DOLLARS for 90 minutes. Daylight bloody robbery.

But other than that instance of bum-clenching municipal thievery, we had a lovely time.

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Pathetically — and signifying that we are now officially old fogeys — we were excited to drive over the Sunshine Bridge, which traverses Tampa Bay from St Pete’s to Bradenton.

We saw dolphins swimming in the bay, which elicited squeals of joy. (From me, not Mr Maximalista.)

After lunch, we drove all the way down to Sarasota, just to see what was there, before heading back to Tampa. We stopped so I could pee at the McDonald’s, and this was the extent of our perambulations in Sarasota.

It would have been nice to walk around the pretty little downtown area, but the weather was too atrocious so we didn’t bother. 

Nevertheless, it was smashing to simply drive to places we probably would have never gone to see, had our flight out of Tampa not been delayed.

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Fast forward to that evening. Our flight was again pushed back, so in the end the wheels didn’t lift off until almost midnight. We landed in Denver in the early hours of the next morning… in the midst of a snowstorm, just to put the icing on the cake.

With forethought, we had chosen to book a hotel near the airport, because we knew we would be too exhausted to drive home in the wee small hours of the morning. Plus the roads would have been dreadfully unnavigable.

We chose Atwell Suites, a ten minute drive from the terminal… and what a bargain it was, at only $94 for our suite. Click on this link to watch my video tour of our suite:

The next morning, we headed home on well-plowed roads that were relatively quiet, due to many businesses being closed on Martin Luther King Day.

In all, the inconvenience of our delayed flight turned into a day of delightful serendipity.

Don’t you love it when that happens?

Lots of love,

M xo