Beaches and Tampa

Thursday, May 23, 2013--From Sarasota to Tampa/St. Petersburg

We began the final leg of our trip today.  Checking out of our hotel in Sarasota, we started the trek toward Tampa-St. Petersburg.  Just north of Sarasota, we made a detour at Bradenton to visit two beaches--Bradenton Beach and Holmes Beach.  Both had beautiful, white sand.  The beaches were narrower than those in Sarasota, and had a few more shells near the water line.  These beaches and the surrounding areas seemed to be a bit more "Old Florida," since there were no high rise apartments and most of the homes and motels were from decades ago.

Our motel is in St. Petersburg.  It had a higher rating on TripAdvisor than any of the similar ones in Tampa.  There seems to be quite a bit of disgruntlement by visitors in relation to their experiences at their motels over there.  Anyway, this one is just at the western edge of St. Petersburg where the highway to downtown Tampa begins.

We ate lunch and picked up the weekly newspapers to see what is happening in town for the weekend.  Then around 17:45, we headed for downtown Tampa.  We parked and spent about 45 minutes walking up and down the streets.  Unfortunately, it is a rather dead city in the center.  There were far more homeless people than others as we walked.  Any older buildings that are still standing were mostly vacant and available for lease.  Several blocks had been completely redeveloped with office buildings that left a sterile feel to the area.  A "riverwalk" was sunny and hot with little character.  We talked about how unfortunate it would be to have to stay in the downtown area for a convention or business meetings.  (There is an entertainment district called Ybor City 10-15 blocks from downtown that is accessible by street car [and not really accessible by walking due to expressways and neighborhoods], but that does not solve the problem of downtown itself being dead.)

Our main purpose for going downtown was to see a film at the Tampa Theater.  It is an old-fashioned movie palace similar to, but smaller than, the Majestic in San Antonio.  Both of them were designed by John Eberson making the similarities easy to spot.  Unfortunately, the Tampa Theater is not as well restored as the Majestic; it has faded tiles, missing plaster in places, and a general "worn" look.  Unlike the Majestic, the Tampa Theater, however, still shows films every night that they do not have a stage show performance.  Tonight, after wandering into the balcony and basement, we settled in orchestra seats and saw the French film Renoir which was interesting both for the story and for the many scenes that were planned to look like Renoir paintings themselves.