5 STAR HOTELS FOR CHEAP

The Don CeSar is a Loews hotel located in St. Pete Beach, Florida, in the United States. Developed by Thomas Rowe and opened in 1928, it gained renown as the Gulf playground for America's pampered rich at the height of the Jazz Age and it still serves as a popular retreat for the rich and famous of today.
In 1924, Thomas Rowe purchased 80 acres (320,000 m2) of land in St. Petersburg, Florida for $100,000 to begin his dream of building a "pink castle". He hired Indianapolis architect Henry Dupont to design the hotel and Carlton Beard as contractor. To ensure the stability of the hotel on the shifting sand and avoid the high cost of sinking so many pilings, Beard devised a floating concrete pad and pyramid footings. To this day there is no sign of evident settling of the hotel. The architecture is a blend of Mediterranean and Moorish styles modeled after different hotels and developments that Rowe and Beard saw in Palm Beach, Coral Gables and Boca Raton. Arched openings, red clay tile roofs, balconies, stucco over hollow tile and tower like upper stories were some of the elements that they borrowed. The original design called for a $450,000 six-story hotel with 110 rooms and baths. It was later expanded to 220 rooms and 220 baths and the costs soared to $1.25 million, 300% over budget. Rowe named it Don Ce-Sar after Don Caesar DeBazan, the hero of William Vincent Wallace's opera Maritana.
Rowe's "Pink Lady" opened on January 16, 1928, with an extravagant party attended by the elite of Tampa and St. Petersburg. The hotel quickly became a favorite romping ground for the rich and famous of the Jazz Age including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Clarence Darrow, Al Capone, Lou Gehrig, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Pink Palace continued to attract the rich and famous throughout the Great Depression, thanks in part to a deal made with New York Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert to house his team during spring training for three years.
However, after the sudden death of Rowe without a will, "The Don" was left to his estranged wife and began to fall into desrepair until the United States entered into World War II and the hotel was bought out by the Army for $450,000. It was converted into a military hospital and reopened in December 1942. In February 1944 the Don Ce-Sar became a U.S. Air Force convalescent center. In June 1945 the Don Ce-Sar was ordered closed and was vacant by September of that year. It was converted into a Veterans Administration Regional Office by the end of 1945.
In November 1967 the Veterans Administration began moving out of the Don Ce-Sar. By spring 1969, the once grand hotel was vacant. The General Services Administration planned to raze the graffiti-covered hotel, but this was met with fierce opposition from local residents. In March 1972 the Don Ce-Sar was sold to C.L.Pyatt and William Bowman Jr., a Holiday Inn franchise owner. The Don CeSar (now spelled without the hyphen) reopened on November 23, 1973. Multiple renovations from 1985 to 2001 have updated and added on to the hotel, including a 4,000-square-foot (370 m2) spa, a signature restaurant, and a second outdoor swimming pool. After the addition of the full-service beach club and spa, the official name of the hotel was changed to The Don CeSar Beach Resort and Spa.
The Don CeSar was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and became a founding member of the National Trust Historic Hotels of America in 1989.
Image was captured with a camera suspended by a kite line. Kite Aerial Photography. (KAP)

today we decided to go to the beach.
but first we ate cheesesteaks.
the kitten loves cheesesteaks.

we went to st.petersburg beach.
there was someone kite-surfing.

we swam out to the sandbar and played in the ocean for a while until i decided to walk to see how far the sandbar went.
i got to where it felt like it might be going back down and i got a little scared so i turned back.
when i turned back around i saw a huge curved black fin slowly rise up from the water and then go back down, just a few dozen feet away.
sam and i looked at each other and then swam for our lives back to shore.

that was scary.
we ended up going back into the water and staying in the shallower parts.

then, as we were taking a break from swimming, i watched as this guy that was with this huge group of guys put his empty beer can down, crushed it into the sand and then ran and jumped in the ocean.

on his way back to his chair he stopped sam and tried to buy pot off of him.
(because he has dreadlocks)

then on his way back to the ocean he stopped next to our blanket and tried to sell sam weed.
sam told him he'd never buy or sell or share anything with him ever.
but he wouldn't leave.
so i told him to please just walk away.

he finally left, yelling things like "if you don't smoke pot, you shouldn't walk around looking like such a huge pothead."
so i yelled back that he should go to the dentist.
(because he had a nasty black fungus growing out of all his gums.)
and he yelled something back about being a "country boy".

gross.

when no one was sitting by their stuff, i found the can he had crushed and threw it at their spot.

then we walked down the beach and we tried to blow bubbles but the ocean breeze blew them for us. and they floated so far, all the way to the hotel balconies.

and that was that.