Day 2 & 3 - 26/27th February

 The check in and flight went seamlessly so we arrived at Tampa airport as expected just after 5pm US time (10pm UK time) and found our allocated car at the car rental place at Tampa airport. The car journey which should have taken 48 minutes from Tampa to our first night's stay, but in fact took us much longer as there was an accident on the road just before the Skyway bridge. Having made slow progress we found the place easily in Bradenton and virtually fell into bed at about 9.30 pm. The place where we are staying for the first 2 nights is small but very clean and comfortable for our short stay, but inevitably we woke at about 2am ready to start the day! 

Today, Friday, was cloudy but warm compared to the UK so we did a quick shop in Walmart, had breakfast at Wendy's and then went on to the golf course, Manatee, to arrange our monthly membership. When we got there we found we had to apply for our memberships on line so we came back to our apartment and Ben spent some time sorting out the golf memberships and booking some golf on his laptop. 

We went for a short walk this afternoon and ended at a park which catered for every sport you could think of. We noticed that none of the roads had footpaths so people aren't expected to walk to places. 

In the evening we thought we would go to a restaurant which we had been to before but it was full, we tried another one where the carpark was full so ended up at the Bonefish Grill. We had to wait about 15 minutes for a table but it was worth it. Ben had a shrimp and scallop pasta and I had grilled shrimp and scallop with rice. It was interesting that there was a note at the bottom of the menu to say that as the scallops were cooked from raw there was a chance we may be ill and possibly die! 

Tomorrow, if we have survived the night, we will be leaving this accommodation, playing golf in the afternoon and then going to our ground floor appartment by the water where we will be staying the rest of the month.