Well, I suppose I should call this sort of checking out St Pete. We have intended to come over to the Gulf side to St Petersburg for four or fives years now. We have friends who live here and even though it’s only a 4.5 hour drive, it’s just one of those things where something always intereferes. However, in the “small world” category, as the release date for Small Town Lies draws near, a friend mentioned the book to her sister who was planning to attend a quilting event. Her sister lives north of St Pete, and each year there is a large quilters’ luncheon and auction as a fundraiser for a charity the group supports. The sister spoke with the lady who is in charge of the event and I was subsequently invited to come and meet everyone. Since we are past the days when we like to make a 10 hour round trip drive (we can still do it, but choose not to), the logical thing was to see if our friends would be in town and make a weekend of it. While one couple was not, one was and voila!, we were all set.

There was, in fact, another set of friends who were “somewhere in the area”, but I wasn’t entirely sure where and  when I sent the email inquiring, it turned out they are in the same town as our other friends. That was a pleasant surprise. In actuality, both sets of friends are in Gulfport, one of the many towns clustered around St Pete. The short trip did not leave time for seeing many of the local sites, but the hotel is on the water and we did gain a better understanding of the area. I can not only recommend it as a destination – we do plan to come back.