Clearwater Beach

We have been visiting this beautiful place for many years and love it just as much as the first time we discovered it. It is a little more comercialised than the beaches further South but has it’s own unique charm.

The first time we visited was through a booking made with a UK travel company called Virgin Holidays that consisted of “2 weeks in Orlando and 1 week at the beach” We initially booked the Holiday Inn on Gulfview blvd, which at that time was just before you got to the old bridge that crossed the inlet where the inland water way met the Gulf. However just a couple of weeks before we were due to fly we got informed that they were moving us to the Sheraton on Sand Key as the Holiday Inn was being refurbished. It turned out we got a good deal. The Sheraton was made famous by the Rev Jim Bakker who resigned as head of the 500,000-member PTL television ministry in March 1987 after saying “he had been blackmailed over his 1980 encounter with Miss Jessica Hahn in a Florida hotel room.”

The hotel is situated over the inlet on a stretch of land called Sand Key. Continuing along this road would lead you to Indian Rocks, Treasure Island, and eventually St. Petersburg. The hotel itself was very nice with it’s own stretch of beach, nice pool and a well stocked Tiki Bar where I had my first aquaintance with a “Mud Slide” and a “Rum Runner”.

Following years on our visits to Florida we never used a tour operator again and started tailor making our holidays. We did stay at Clearwater regularly though, at, The Quality Beach Resort, and Travelodge once as we left it late to book and turned up on spec when the Tampa Bay Buccs was playing at home against the Dallas Cowboys and Clearwater was packed with Cowboy fans!

There are some very nice places to eat here. We like Reno’s, Gondoliers and Leverocks. We also enjoyed the exquisite sunsets that occur here never the same two nights running. Well worth a visit.