Tampa, Florida

After our visit to the space center, we made the 2 1/2 drive back across Florida to get to Tampa. At one of our stops for gas we found these alligator heads. I was tempted to get the little one, but didn't. I think it would look a little out of place in our NYC apartment.

Our hotel was actually in St. Petersberg, which is just to the southwest of Tampa across Old Tampa Bay. We drove across the bay just as the sun was starting to set and it was gorgeous. 

The sunset just got prettier and prettier as we went.

We were glad to get to our hotel, it had been a very fun, but long day. We were ready to be out of the car. Our hotel was extremely nice, maybe the nicest one I've ever been in.

We woke up bright and early the next day, ready to make our test stops in St. Petersburg/Tampa. We started out with a stop at a German bakery called Cafe Mozart. We got a cherry danish, a piece of apple strudel and a slice of blueberry crumble. It was all delicious. 

The scenery had started to change on our drive the previous day. We passed a lot of pines and deciduous trees with moss dripping off their branches when we started out. The pines weren't the quintessential Christmas tree shape, but the rounded, long-needled kind. The closer we got to Tampa the more palm trees we saw. There were some great views from our various testing spots.

I loved this tree that we parked in front of at one point during the day. Those are roots growing from the branches down into the ground. This happens on specific types of tress in very humid climates. It was cool to see.

After our stops in St. Petersburg, we stopped by Ricky P's Po Boy Shop to pick up some lunch. Brian ordered a Po Boy sandwich that consisted of various vegetables, fried shrimp and hot sauce. I ordered a yummy looking turkey sandwich. We got the food to go and drove to our next stop, Ballast Point Park in South Tampa.

The area around the park was very charming, lots of mossy trees, white fences and fancy houses. We found a spot in the shade to park because it was super hot.

We walked over to the park where there were picnic benches for us to eat our lunch on. I though this row of palm trees was funny, they were all leaning at exactly the same angle. I wondered if they were planted that way so they wouldn't grow up into the power lines.

We passed by a huge jasmine bush, I could smell it well before we reached it. I LOVE the smell of jasmine. We used to sell potted jasmine at the nursery I worked at while we lived in Idaho. I loved to work near these plants in the greenhouse, because their flowers smell amazing. There were little gecko-type lizards sitting out on the edge of the sidewalk sunning themselves below the jasmine. They ran off really fast when we tried to get closer for a better look.

Our sandwiches were delicious, and the day was beautiful. It was above 90 degrees though and the humidity was stifling. The park sits on the edge of Hillsborough Bay with downtown Tampa in the distance. We walked out on one of the piers to stretch our legs and snap some photos. The pier was full of people fishing and there were fish jumping in the water.

Brian saw this school of sting rays first and pointed them out. It was pretty cool to see a whole bunch of them swimming right along the pier. These ones looked exactly like the rays we got to touch and feed at Sea World on our trip last year.

The views from the pier were gorgeous and I loved the boats out on the water.

There was this huge ray that we saw swimming by itself. It was so close to the surface of the water that if the pier wasn't so high we could of reached out and touched it.

The drive into downtown Tampa was fun. I always love to see the downtown area of cities, but after living in New York they look so small. In both height and spread. 

We especially loved the feel of the Ybor historic district in Tampa. This section of the city dates back to the 1880's when cigar manufactures set up their factories here. The area was flooded with immigrants from Spain, Italy and Cuba, who worked in the factory rolling cigars. There is definitely a flair to that portion of the city reminiscent of those cultures. 

Brian had to tweet at each test stop, so he found some creative ways to include the PC Mag logo on the car in his pics.

After grabbing dinner and heading back to our hotel we headed down to the pool to relax a bit and cool off. However, the restaurant in the hotel opened up into the pool area and eventually people started coming out with drinks and mingling. We were just in shorts and t-shirts reading, and felt a little under-dressed next to the diners who were all fancied up. We headed up soon after and Brian said something about it being the "Lonely Hearts Club" down there. It was true, they all appeared to be single and looking for a friend.

Although there wasn't anything really significant to our visit in Tampa, it was still fun. It seemed like a nice city. We loved seeing the bay and had some great food, and overall enjoyed our time here.