My daughter’s swim meet, which was her final one of her swimming “career” was moved this past spring from St. Pete to Tampa due to covid.
In prior years, I stayed on points or Free Nights at various Hiltons, Hyatts and Marriotts in St. Petersburg. However, this year, with the meet being right on the grounds of the Emerald Greens Condo Resort, we paid for our stay. We secured a nice two bedroom-two bath condo as the convenience was worth forgoing me finding a place to stay in Tampa on points (I’m sure I could have). I paid for this stay (travel) with my Chase Sapphire Reserve card so earned a bunch of Chase Ultimate Rewards points (3x per $1) on our roughly $1200 3 night stay.
Other than flying in and out of the airport, I had never been to Tampa. When we didn’t need to actually be at the swim meet, we explored a little bit of of the city driving around and going for lunch. And I was impressed with Tampa!
We had lunch at Fresh Kitchen (your typical bowls place-but yum!) on South Howard aka SoHo. The street had lots of restaurants and bars and I would love to check it out at night if I ever find myself back in Tampa.
Another day we headed to the Tampa Heights neighborhood to check out Armature Works. This fully restored mixed-use building was the type of place that should be in every city. It had a ton of diverse eateries, markets and galleries in a gigantic warehouse space.
We drove through downtown and it looked modern and bustling along the river. I wish I would have had more time to explore. Tampa seems like a great city!