This afternoon, my son and I drove to a cute little town about 12 miles south of here, called Tarpon Springs. The town has an interesting history. It was founded as a fishing settlement by Greek settlers, so there is a large Greek population and many Greek restaurants and bakeries. Unfortunately we didn’t eat out (he’s cooking at home tonight to save money but I know whatever he cooks will be great) but we did spend about an hour and a half just walking around, window shopping and looking at the boats on the dock.  Most of the boats have Greek names, sport the Greek flag, or refer to Greece in some way.

Most of the gift shops specialize in seashells from the local area and gifts made from seashells, and sponges. Lots and lots of sponges. The Greek fishermen who settled here specialized in sponge fishing, so to this day, that’s the town’s bread and butter. After the sponges, there’s a lot of handmade soap, and even a store that specializes in handmade scented soaps of every scent you can imagine. I picked up a bar of eucalyptus goat milk soap.

I did pick up a few small gifts to bring home to my daughter, and a hematite necklace for me.

Tonight after dinner and maybe a swim in the pool, I think we’re just going to watch a movie here at the apartment. Just a nice, quiet, relaxing evening. It’s incredible how little money I’ve actually spent since coming here (most of the things we’ve been doing are free or nearly free), and how cheap it even was to drive here. I’ll actually have most of the money I’d saved for this trip left over! Guess I’ll be visiting more often.