Tampa and Ybor City

We awoke around 6 am this morning at the Bayview Plaza Waterfront Resort and had a breakfast of the food we bought at Publix last night.  Since our room has a fully equipped kitchen, breakfast was easy.  We watched the morning news and did a couple of German lessons on Duolingo before heading toward Tampa for the day.  Our room has a nice balcony overlooking the bay where we hear that manatees can be frequently sighted.

Our first stop was the Florida Aquarium in downtown Tampa.  We parked at the parking garage across the street and walked over and was pleased that the aquarium was not at all crowded.  The parking garage uses chip coins as a way of metering parking which we found interesting. The aquarium is about the size of the Newport Aquarium in Cincinnati but is specific to Florida fish, birds and wildlife.  

One large tank had a wide diversity of fish native to the Tampa Bay including drum, permit, sharks and a huge goliath grouper that is about 800 pounds. The fish were so well fed that we saw a several bits of cut bait fall to the aquarium floor uneaten.  There was also a nice display of sea horses some native to Florida and others from Australia and the Pacific.  We also enjoyed watching the river otters romping in their displays. We both enjoyed our visit there until around 12:30. 

We drove a short distance to a part of Tampa called Ybor City that was the center of cigar production in the area for many years.  The docent at the museum there gave us some tips for places to visit and things to see in Ybor City as well as a brief history of the community.  Ybor City was founded in the 1860s largely by immigrants from Spain.  The town is named for industrialist Vicente Martinez Ybor who founded some of the area’s largest and most successful cigar factories in the late 1800s.

For lunch, we went to La Tropicana that appeared to attract mostly locals with many working class people enjoying their lunch there.  La Tropicana has been a local dining and social spot in Ybor City since 1963.  We both had a Cuban Sandwich which is a cold cut sandwich with a variety of meats with pickles, lettuce, tomatoes and sauces on toasted bread.  I finished my meal with a nice cup of café con leche.  We walked around Ybor City a bit more then drove over to the Lowry Park Zoo nearby.  We didn’t want to visit the zoo but walked around Lowry Park a bit. 

Since it was after 4 pm we decided to make our way back toward St. Pete Beach.  We drove through Largo then back to St. Pete Beach.  We took a short drive south to an area called Passa Grille that is a mostly residential area of St. Pete Beach but has some nice beach areas. 

We stopped at our room briefly and set up to take some snapshots of the sunset over the Gulf from the beach as part of the Bayview Plaza Waterfront Resort which was a nice vantage point for photos.  It is a very photogenic area and has beach chairs, corn hole and other activities for guests. 

After shooting the sunset, we went a short distance to Crabby Bill’s for dinner.  Crabby Bill’s is a local chain with four locations all the in Clearwater/St. Petersburg area.  We both had the soup of the day which was crab corn chowder which was very good.  Mary had a grilled crab cake that she says had a lot of lump crab meat.  I had fish tacos that had a nice blackened whitefish and sweet potato fries on the side.  We both enjoyed our meals.  Crabby Bill’s is a fairly typical beach fish house, not unlike Joe’s Crab Shack or many others of that type.  I want to go back for the stone crab legs here before we leave.

After dinner we returned to our room to sack out and prepare for Wednesday.  Although the day was cool by Florida standards, we didn’t find it unpleasant and the temperatures are expected to rise throughout the week.

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