Day 13 - Tampa and around

We're staying at the same hotel as last night so we didn't need to schlep our stuff about today.  Our first stop was Tarpon Springs, it is a town based on sponge fishing. It was founded by greek immigrants that were sponge farmers that moved to florida after hearing about the sponges in the gulf of mexico. All the shops were full of Greek people and greek merch and there were loads of Greek restaurants and bakeries everywhere. It was a really cool wee town and the shops selling sponges were able to tell you which of the boats outside had brought the sponges they were selling in. We went to a shop called Spongearama that had a free video about sponges which turned out to be half an hour long and from the 50s! It was very informative though.   Afterwards we went to Hellas bakery and we both had a greek pastry, K's was savoury and mine was sweet - both were delicious.

Our next stop was Clearwater Beach which famously has a beautiful beach and is the Spring Break capital.  The beach was beautiful with white sand and beautiful blue water but sadly it was a bit windy so a wander on the beach was a no-go. We had a look about the shops including a Hulk Hogan shop! We were ready for lunch by this stage so we consulted Yelp and decided to go to Clear Sky Cafe. It was a great choice and we shared a Cuban sandwich and a chicken ceasar wrap and some potato wedges, all delicious.

Afterwards we cruised down the islands and went through Belleair Beach, Indian Shores and Indian Rocks Beach.  We saw some amazing houses and the water was on both sides of the road.

We waved goodbye to the seaside for the final time and headed east to Tampa. We got to Tampa just before four and parked downtown.  The city centre was weirdly quiet but we wandered about and snapped some photos of some really lovely buildings including the tampa theatre.  We decided to regroup and try to find out where everyone was so we went to Indigo Coffee and had a look over a some tourism leaflets. We both had a cheeky iced latte while we did our research as even though it was dull today and rain was expected it was still roasting.  We decided to head for the vintage streetcar to Ybor City as there are a lot of bars and restaurants there.

The streetcar was cool and the route went past all the tourist attractions we hadn't been to. Ybor is the oldest area of Tampa and was historically the Cuban area where the cigar factories were.  The buildings were lovely so we tried to cover as much ground as possible for photos before it got dark.

We had planned to go to the Tampa Bay Brewing Company for dinner but we weren't really hungry so we just went for a drink.  They have a bar and seating area outside the restaurant so we sat at the bar and I tried some of their own brewed ales and k tried their own brewed root beer. After a while, we ordered a starter to share for a light dinner. It was 2 freshly baked big pretzels with a cheese and ale dip and a beer and mustard dip, it was a delicious time.

After a couple of hours at the brewery we decided to push on. We were strolling along, minding our own business when we passed Game Time, an awesome games arcade.  We didn't need to discuss it, we love holiday arcade time! We got a $10 card and had about an hour of funtimes. I somewhat redeemed myself after the mini golf debacles,  I won at air hockey, skee ball and car racing. K won at shooting and beer pong but we don't need to linger on that. We also played some deal or no deal but we were a team for that.

Our final stop in Ybor was Bunker coffee shop which was really nice and I had another iced latte.  Afterwards we jumped back on the streetcar back to downtown to pick up the car and headed back over the bridge to the hotel.

Tomorrow is our final full day and I am pretty sad about it but we plan to have maximum fun to get the best out of it.