The Tampa area's primary offering to tourists is its sunny Florida weather, its sandy beaches, and its access to the ocean. Overall there's a sleepier, more relaxed feel here than in Miami. People come here for the primary purpose of relaxation and soaking up the sun.

St. Petersburg (pictured at right) has a real small-town feeling, to the point of being kind of boring. It is a vacation paradise for rich senior citizens, but for the rest of us, it can be a bit dull. The Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg is not really worth seeing. The real attraction for art lovers in St. Pete is the Salvador Dali Museum, which features the largest collection of this artist's work outside of Europe. The museum's holdings cover the entire range of his career, from his early experiments in impressionism and cubism to his reign as a master of surrealism, to his later classic period which features huge canvases painted in a highly-detailed, almost Renaissance style. Many of the works in this museum are straight out of the art history textbooks, like The Hallucinogenic Toreador and The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used as a Table. This museum is a great tribute to one man's artistic genius.

Nearby Clearwater doesn't have any art museums that I know of, but its atmosphere is much less octogenarian than St. Pete. It is more of what you'd expect from a coastal town. The lovely beaches are active day and night, and there are hundreds of places where you can get a Corona and a grouper sandwich.

There are some good nature sights in this area. From the beaches in Clearwater you can get close up looks at Brown Pelicans and distant visions of dolphins swimming by. For closer looks at these mammals, you can take a dolphin tour around Tampa Bay and out into the gulf. In addition to spotting frolicing dolphins, you'll also see plenty of bird species and a lot of really impressive celebrity waterfront mansions. The Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary, south of Clearwater is an interesting spot for birdwatchers to visit, though a little depressing. It is a rehabilitation facility for injured birds. While pelicans and gulls represent the bulk of the patients, the variety of species being cared for here is staggering. The folks at this sanctuary are truly doing good work. An excellent place to spend a morning is Boyd Hill Nature Park, near St. Pete. It features a network of short trails amongst a Floridian semi-tropical forest, overgrown with Cypress trees and creeping vines

Scenes from the St. Petersburg shore

Home | Art Gallery | Design Portfolio | About Karl
What's New | Travels | Links | Genealogy | Contact Karl

All artwork and photographs in this site ©Karl Janssen, unless otherwise noted.
No reproduction of images without permission.