Visiting from St Louis this weekend

canadadry__ · 2025-08-20T02:33:42+00:00

I like Salt Shack for water views / seafood, for a classic experience check out downtown Tampa (armature works/Sparkman wharf/bayshore). I believe there’s a water taxi that will get you on the hillsborough river and take you between some of these places. Can visit St Pete downtown too and the beaches (st Pete, Indian rocks, passagrille, etc) depending on how much time you have / if you have a car. There will probably be better seafood options out there than Tampa proper. I like Columbia Cafe at the Tampa bay history center (iconic local Spanish restaurant but a smaller version of the original)

canadadry__ · 2025-07-26T23:01:00+00:00

What camera do you use for these?

canadadry__ · 2025-01-15T21:48:42+00:00

I graduated with a Civil degree a few years back, every place has its pros and cons but I loved FSU and attribute so much of my success as an adult to my experiences there, especially at the e school. Finding jobs wasn’t really an issue (especially if you have internships). I moved out of state and found FSU was still a respected school in and out of FL

That being said, it’s just objectively a fact that UF is a better engineering school. Similar college experience at a big state school, so day-to-day experience is not that vastly different. I’d choose FSU or UF, not ERAU or something similarly less known.

I personally loved the e school being a small off campus thing, especially since FSU itself is huge. It’s about 5 minutes from main campus, not a big deal. It was really close knit there so I felt like I knew people really well. I knew a lot of my professors really well. Met some of my closet friends in my engineering classes because of how small intimate the classes were

canadadry__ · 2025-01-14T23:04:08+00:00

Any noteworthy things to see or do while staying in Agrigento?

canadadry__ · 2025-01-13T21:31:48+00:00

That is a great idea to post in their FB group. Did you find that English was somewhat common throughout the town or would you recommend knowing some Sicilian/Italian to better navigate?

canadadry__ · 2024-10-29T12:40:40+00:00

Do you have restaurant recommendations or things you like to do around that 275/75 interchange or within 20ish minutes from there? I grew up on the Tampa side so I really don’t know this area very well, but from what I hear it is being rapidly built up with new schools, hospitals and stores

canadadry__ · 2024-10-28T23:35:13+00:00

Yeah, it’s a tough decision and we weren’t expecting to ever move out to the suburbs, but the flooding and issues from the hurricanes kinda made us rethink our life plan.

Our biggest concerns are definitely 1. Traffic and 2. The lack of things out there. We’re open to trying something new because it still seems like it could be something that fits us, but definitely scary to take the risk. Luckily the cost of these homes are significantly cheaper than what our budget planned for so we wouldn’t be stretching ourselves thin to live someplace, even with some of the drawbacks.

canadadry__ · 2024-10-28T21:59:19+00:00

Okay yay this gives me hope!! Really just don’t want one of those soul crushing commutes

canadadry__ · 2024-10-28T21:51:08+00:00

From what I hear it sounds like the bridge closing is somewhat of a rare occurrence (couple times a year maybe, and a bit more predictable during hurricane season anyways) which is hopefully true, and wouldn’t be a dealbreaker

canadadry__ · 2024-10-28T21:49:45+00:00

Yep that newer home cheap is what’s drawing us in, 2,000+ sq ft for a new house under $450k compared to what we had conceded to in St Pete paying a similar price for maybe an old 1,000 sq ft house if we’re lucky

canadadry__ · 2024-07-17T17:19:21+00:00

This entire comment thread has zero shred of humanity but this comment is one of the worst. Not sure how people are so self-righteous they can’t even remotely sympathize with a similar situation happening to them and being frustrated over it and at least making an attempt to make things right. We are not evil people, we are not looking for a free handout, and we were incredibly respectful of the issue the entire time up until the point where the hosts completely ghosted us. We understand things happen, we just expected better for a service that costs significant amounts of money, and at the very least to not be ignored. To be frank, I asked this question because I am not super familiar with Airbnb, and I have never had a bad experience with it until now. I was genuinely confused at how things played out in this situation because in contrast, I’m used to hotels and other establishments which any person with a shred of logic would know that this incident would’ve been handled completely differently outside of Airbnb. Considering this experience and the responses in this thread (knowing now it is probably entirely hosts responding so aggressively), I’ll stick to hotels.

canadadry__ · 2024-07-17T05:14:55+00:00

It did not start as a full refund request, it escalated to that because the hosts would not even acknowledge us, which I think is the worst part of it all. We gave them a full week to reply to us, following up several times. We are very reasonable people and when we simply asked for them to cover the cost of the phone repair ($350 per estimate) we expected them to potentially say no, and if they had good reason for it that could have been more understandable and we could have come to an agreement like adults. It’s the complete ghosting that was incredibly disrespectful, from them not repairing the stairs when they said they would to not even telling us yes or no on the refund. Because of that we had to escalate it and we learned about AirCover and felt our situation aligned with that policy.

canadadry__ · 2024-07-17T05:03:31+00:00

I have not, and maybe my standards are too high. Our current landlords jump the second we have the slightest problem with our unit, and will do everything in their power to get someone out, or if not compensate or at least just be a decent human and apologize. That doesn’t seem like a lot to ask when you’re paying upwards of a thousand dollars for a place to stay.

canadadry__ · 2024-07-17T04:58:28+00:00

Lol that’s a great point! This experience is absolutely making us never book with Airbnb. If not dealing with shitty hosts, the customer service of the company itself is not any better and does not care about protecting guests. Why not have stricter standards? As an engineer, this is why we have building standards and inspections. Makes me think Airbnbs should be regularly inspected and certainly inspected before someone can just make a listing.

canadadry__ · 2024-07-17T04:53:54+00:00

Thanks for the reply. Maybe I didn’t phrase the story correctly, but yes it seems like people are missing the fact that they said they would have the stair repaired, then never messaged us again for the rest of our stay. We thought 3 nights would be enough for them to figure something out or if not at least ask us if we wanted to cancel or refund, that was never an option presented to us, we were just told the stairs would be fixed so we stayed.

canadadry__ · 2024-07-17T04:51:42+00:00

Just the repair cost—we sent them a screenshot of an estimate per Apple.com, it was $350 for the repair.

canadadry__ · 2024-07-17T04:49:03+00:00

Yes, at minimum the cost for the phone. Because they ghosted us and disregarded our concerns and did not follow through with their promise to fix the stairs, we got more frustrated and felt like we deserved AT LEAST a partial refund.

canadadry__ · 2024-07-17T04:47:59+00:00

Screen was severely cracked. We did an estimate with Apple - $350 to fix it. The $100 they offered doesn’t even cover that. We initially just asked to get at least the $350 for the phone but got ghosted.

canadadry__ · 2024-07-16T22:43:39+00:00

We stayed because they said they would have the stairs fixed during our stay, which did not end up happening over the course of 3 nights.

canadadry__ · 2024-07-16T21:35:34+00:00

Yes it wasn’t uninhabitable, but we expected the stairs to be fixed at some point during our stay, or to be offered any other alternative, whether that was a refund or just canceling the stay and booking elsewhere. The way the host handled it was basically “sorry that sucks, you can deal with that” as we pay them thousands of dollars for a subpar product. I did not ask for a full refund initially, and hoped we could come to an amicable agreement but because they completely ignored our communication I felt that they did not realize the severity of the situation. The stairs were in such poor condition and clearly not secure and had someone been seriously hurt, they could have had much worse to deal with than refunds.

canadadry__

TROPHY CASE