Mmmmmm. I love St. Barts. Especially the fried tomato stuffed with crab appetizer. Yummm.

Did you go to the bar afterwards? They always have an interesting band playing.

Frankly Scarlett (I just couldn't resist), the hotel is beautiful. It is a bit larger than I imagined and is oriented parellel to the bay. This means that the rooms on that side of the hotel are much more desirable than the ones that face the airport (it is 2 minutes from the airport). We were lucky enough to be on the bay side fairly high up and the views are stunning. I'm sitting in a nice chair with an ottoman typing this now -- there is also a desk, nice armoir-style entertainment center/dresser and nicely appointed bathrooms. I can see the boardwalk path from my room through the mangroves and it looks lovely. It is what you would expect for a Grand Hyatt, concierge, valet, bellmen hustling to open the front door, friendly staff, variety of room service options, mini-bar and all that. Judging from my wife's rythmic breathing, I'd wager that the bed is comfortable.

We had a light snack when we arrived this afternoon in the lobby bar with a glass of wine. The airlines of course caused us to miss lunch, since you have to take a 12 hour flight to get a meal any more. As an aside, why do airplanes make you tired? It seems that you only sit in a chair the whole time. I had a crab cake and my wife had some kind of shrimp dumpling. The server was informal and very friendly, as befit the location. She made a very tempting pitch for dessert, but we were saving ourselves. The wind was a bit chilly, so we went for the indoor seating. We were both happy with our impromtu snack

Our meal at St. Barts was excellent. We selected a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc from the extensive wine list and decided to just dine tapas style, since our schedule was a bit off and we didn't feel like a heavy meal. It didn't work out that way, as we couldn't resist adding the seared Foie Gras to our initial selections (Heart of Palm and Mango Salad, Mussels and Shrimp & Scallop skewer). We got to chat in French with the staff, which was fun. To be honest, I should say that my wife got to chat in French and I nodded and said "oui" and "merci" once or twice. The first three tapas were extraordinary, the salad had a tangy mustard-based dressing with banana chips for contrast as well as generous slices of mango and avacado and the mussels had a wonderful creamy, salty, thousand island-ish sauce that required us to do the French thing and sop it up with baguettes. The foie gras was not quite up to the same standard, although they swore it was imported from France. It came in a very dense fruit sauce, which was an interesting choice. Nonetheless, we had worked our way through the bottle of wine and were feeling very full and happy. There was a tableside dessert prep cart next to our table, so we were saving ourselves anyhow.

I had the hazelnut chocolate dome, which had a dense hazlenut mousse wrapped up in a chocolate shell swimming an ambroisal sauce whose componants included strawberry and lots of cream. My wife had the crepes Suzette prepared tableside with lots of fire and caramel. She was delighted with it, although unable to finish it. Ever gallant, I pitched in to help. We also had two glasses of French Muscat dessert wine (alas, no Sauternes). Our waitress tipped us over and rolled us out the door, very happy with ourselves.

We passed on the bar, although it was getting quite lively as we were leaving. Given that we managed to take the wrong exit and take a very long detour across the bridge on our way to St. Barts, we felt that we might not be up for a late night. Don't pay attention to the posting time, I am an incurable insomniac.

La, Mike, I do love a Gallant man who helps his wife in all things, even in finishing dessert~
The Hyatt sounds lovely, so did your evening. I hope the rest of your stay is as nice ((F))

Scarlett...you devil you! ;) LOL

Mike...I'm so sorry about the weather! I worked on that but just could not get it to see things my way. Glad St. Barts was good and hope your meal this evening is equally enjoyable. I'm trying to figure out what wrong turn you made...did you go over the Courtney Campbell Cswy toward Clearwater or the Howard Frankland Bridge toward St Pete, as you tried to get to Hyde Park instead? Good grief how frustrating! If it's the Howard Frankland, you have to go clear across the bay until you can turn around, but Courtney Campbell is more forgiving.

So...did you find the cache and if so can you tell us what it was? Did you add something of your own to it?

Mike, re: your room.
Were you "lucky" to be on that side of the hotel or were you "lucky" someone knew you were coming ? LOL

Scarlett: Although I am quite charming, one never knows what causes good things to happen in the end, does one?

OO: I did go to St Pete's because I was mesmerized by the Hertz NeverLost gadget. It was helpful in the sense that I wasn't lost, I knew exactly what the dumb thing was that I did, but I couldn't do anything about it. We are referring to it as a scenic detour.

On geocaching: We did indeed find many caches. In fact, we found 10, which is a new record for us. We brin

I have to learn to hit the right buttons. In the finished draft I somehow lost, I added to Scarlett that it is always good to know the right people.

Anyhow, on caching: We did indeed find many caches. It was in fact a new personal record of 10. The best thing about caching on vacation is that people generally select attractive locations for hiding the cache, so you get to see interesting places you might not have ever found otherwise. Today, we sat under the runway at TPA, went to Cypress Point Park, a World War Memorial, Swann Circle Park, McKay Bay Nature Park, Davis Island Garden Club, Fred Ball Park, Drew Park, Picnic Island Park on South Tampa Island and a Nature Preserve at the Gandy Bridge. It is a lot of fun and a kind of stealth exercise, which is probably the only kind we'd get. We brought lots of trinkets to trade and unloaded most of them in exchange for some laminated cards from local folks. We have a small collection of those items (called "signature items" by the caching types). We may have inadvertantly got too much exercise, because I'm a bit sore.

We had lunch at Columbia. My lovely bride had the 1904 salad and half presed Cuban sandwich and I had the whole salad with sauteed shrimp. When my server dropped one of the shrimp on the floor, she made up for it with a whole extra bowl of shrimp from the kitchen. I live a charmed life.

We topped off an excellent day with a snack of champagne, strawberries and cream in our room admiring the sunset. It was absolutely the perfect cap to a great day of fun.

We're getting ready to wander over to Oystercatchers as I write this (for the second time). I'm sure it will be lovely. Your advice has been absolutely perfect this far!

We even are quite happy with the weather. We only come in shades of pale white or bright red so the overcast day was great and the temps are really the perfect hiking weather.

Strawberries and cream!! My my...decadent weekend. ;)

I was talking with our daughter today, and knowing they have a GPS for their backcountry hiking, asked if they'd ever heard of geocaching. Not only had they, but they've done it, finding a cache on South Mtn behind their house in Phoenix. Where have I been? Her husband gave me the website (www.geocaching.com) so I'd looked at that and seen there was one at Swann Circle, but the people that found it thought it had been moved as it was about 40 yds from the co-ordinates. You've been all over today--those are wide spread and some I'm not familiar with...others I've heard of but never seen (I've seen Picnic Island from the water only) and never knew there was a nature preserve off the Gandy.

Glad the weather suited you--it was not supposed to be so overcast--we had had plans to go sailing until the "crud" materialized so instead stayed home and washed the cars. Exciting day at the Popeye/OO household!

Hope all is well at OC's tonight, and if not...I don't want to hear about it here! :D Enjoy the rest of your stay Mike....you Silver Tongued Devil you. :)