Sarasota, St. Petersburg and Tampa

I started from Fort Myers today. It's somewhat weird, on this trip, I always arrived at Fort XXX (Fort Lauderdale as well) during night, and I don't have time for them the next day.

The first stop was Sarasota. In my dear travel book, it was said there are a lot country-style islands there, and you will feel Caribbean culture there. I was attempted, so I dropped by. I didn't took Highway 75, instead, I took Highway 41. Highway 41 is called Tamiami trail (Tamiami = Tampa -> Miami). Because I was afraid that I'm going to get bored by boring highway view and become sleepy and get killed, so I was always trying to find a nice view road to drive (or probably not nice view, but more stuff to look at, and the whole point of my trip is to see things, what's going on here and there, so enjoying the process is much more important than getting to the destination).

I went to Towles Court Art Colony as suggested in the book. It's a very artistic area, full of galleries, intresting houses and plants, with lizards all over the lawn. Didn't get much time to see the town, since I need to arrive at Orlando at night. =( However, I took a detour to see the small islands near Sarasota. It was a nice drive, I'm always so fond of trees and water, and this kind of drive is full of them. Sea is just beside you, and big trees (lots of different kinds) are all over the road sides.

The next one is St. Petersburg (btw, the view on the big bridge from Bradenton to St. Petersburg is spectacular! Driving above the sea, this is so cool.. lol). I went to the so-called "American #1 Beach" at Fort DeSoto Park. It seems that it was rated #1 in 2005. Anyway, in my point of view, yes, it can really be rated #1 among the beaches I've been... It's remote, and in a big park, not too many people, no business shops around, birds' nests are around the beach, trees all over, white&fine sand, really pretty and peaceful...

All right, then I got hungry, and headed to Ybor@Tampa for food. Ybor is small city in Tampa and full of Cuban ppl. It starts with a cigar factory composed of Cuban workers in 19th century. So this means Ybor is a nice place for hunting Cuban food. =) The restaurant I went to is called La Teresita. It's very down to earth and indeed full of Cuban ppl. They don't talk in English, or their English is hard to understand, but it's very interesting being there. I wanted to talk with them, but it seems hard. =( The food was quite good, I ordered shredded steak and moro rice, and they gave me bread as well. I quite like Cuban bread, it's crispy, and they spread sth like butter on it, and melt the butter(?) into the bread, hmm, so yummy...