fourteen, fifteen, and the beginning of sixteen. . .

Tanya kindly took the day off to show us a few of the hot spots in Tampa. Including, but not limited to: Cafe Hey, Grass Root, Cappy's Pizzeria, and New World Brewery. It was so good to see Tanya and Ryan, a few of their friends and some of the places they frequent. I, unfortunately, did not get my camera out, except to document this exceptional raw sandwich, which I consumed, per Tanya's recommendation at Grass Root:


Ted, more diligent than myself, took a couple of candid shots, documenting the loveliness of Tanya and Ryan:

(Disclaimer: In real life they generally have smiling faces.)

We greeted the next day and soon Ted and Ryan were off into the heat....HEAT of the day to go skating at the bro bowl. The bro bowl is located in a rough area of Tampa, which seems to be undergoing some sort of un-roughing process of sorts the past couple of years. Ryan made sure Ted didn't have his wallet with him, and of course no camera was brought along (So no pictures, sorry. The rest of the internet has some nodes dedicated to pictures of said bro bowl if you wish to peruse). this is ted typing, it was too difficult/complicated to pretend otherwise. anyhow, the bro bowl is a tampa skate institution, being built some thirty odd years ago. its quite the old, crusty buscuit of a skate park. down hill snake run for maximum speed into the heart of this lumpy lumpy bowl, sometimes full of meandering children, sometimes really full of meandering children. once heat stroke seemed imminent, we returned to the air conditioned pods of apartment, car, apartment, dali museum (oof. so weird that its in tampa, but amazing. so many huge works i hadnt seen before in real life. the details are incredible). got up early the next day and started driving to New Orleans (melissa is back on the keyboard!).

Hunger overcame us in the panhandle, so Ted texted Google "vegan restaurants, pensacola, fl" and Google advised us to call the End of the Line Cafe. . . It was amazing and cheap! (Homemade cashew cheese, thai iced tea with coconut milk, and $5 for a vegan rueben?!) Thanks, google.

We split the chef salad:


And the knuckle sandwich:
Delicious!

We arrived at the hostel (One of the only two places we had to pay to stay at in our whole cross countries adventure.) a little late, but we walked around, saw the sights and Ted ate an order of Beniets, whilst I sipped chicory coffee:



From New Orleans we drove all the way to Austin, arriving at the home of our generous couchsurfing hosts, late in the evening.

To be continued. . .