ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA (dpa) – The sun shines on 360 out of 365 days of the year in Pinellas County, and there are more than enough beaches on which to bask.
The action beyond the coastline is centred on the St. Petersburg- Clearwater area. Most tourists stay in St. Petersburg, where accommodation is usually just a stone’s throw from the sea. Yet Pinellas County and St. Petersburg have more to offer than simply hotel and beach life – there is a wide range of nature, cultural and sporting activities.
The peninsula on the west coast of Florida is surrounded by Tampa Bay to the east and the Gulf of Mexico to the west.
You can explore the quieter side of Florida by taking a trip to Caladesi Island State Park, a nature reserve on one of the offshore islands in the Gulf of Mexico that can only by reached by boat. The long beach is ideal for lonely walks, or you can examine the island’s flora and fauna on the inland nature trail stretching nearly five kilometres long.
Suncoast Bird Sanctuary at Indian Shores, a short car trip from St. Petersburg, is well worth a visit. The daily pelican feeding sessions, for which the birds gather excitedly on the beach, are not to be missed. When their warden Woody Moulton brings the buckets full of fish, they waddle down to the water and sit in line.
The sanctuary takes in around 9,000 birds a year, making it the largest bird hospital in the United States, treating between 500 and 700 birds at any one time. “There are no injuries that we haven’t seen here,” said Moulton – which makes it all the more astounding that more than 80 per cent of the birds treated here are later released back into the wild.
Visitors to Tarpon Springs in the north of Pinellas County could be forgiven for thinking they were holidaying in Greece rather than Florida. All the restaurants here are tavernas with names like Mykonos or Zorbas.
Even the local car workshop is called Athens Auto Repair. The first Greeks settled in Tarpon Springs in the 1950s – they were attracted here to dive for sponges. But today it is home to around 30,000 Greeks or U.S. citizens of Greek origin. “Only a few of them now work as sponge divers,” said Achilles, a barman aged 70. Now they do all kinds of jobs – there are even four different bridge painters.
Dinner in a Greek restaurant here is an experience not to be missed. The stuffed vine leaves served here were huge. They were offered up with grilled cheese, white bread and aubergine pate – and that was just the starter.
People in St. Petersburg with money build a house on the waterfront. And the best place for visitors to view these villas is from the waves. One option is to take a sailing tour at sunset from St. Pete’s Beach. The yachts set sail an hour before sundown, the two-hour tour costs around 25 dollars per person. You might also catch a glimpse of dolphins swimming in the boat’s wake.
After a full day of sport, nature or culture, you could wind down at the Bay Walk entertainment complex in the centre of St. Petersburg, that first opened in autumn 2000. Its numerous restaurants include one called “dish” for which guests pick out the ingredients themselves and watch the chef prepare it. There are also many boutiques and outlet stores here, and a 4,200-seat multiplex cinema with 20 screens.
Like elsewhere on the coast of Florida, St. Petersburg offers excellent fish and seafood restaurants. The Lobster Pot on Gulf Boulevard in Redington Beach, half an hour’s drive north from St. Petersburg is small but sumptuous.
It breaks with the district’s generally casual dress code, and expects diners to dress up a bit – and to make reservations. The same goes for “Guppy’s on the Beach” at Indian Rocks Beach, whose German owner specialises in seafood and pasta for fair prices.
