If, at this point, you would like to detour a few minutes north to visit downtown St. Petersburg, just take I-275 north and follow the signs. This compact city faces the enclosed waters of Tampa Bay, and has a lovely chain of waterfront parks. It's a great place for a stroll on the sometimes-cooler winter mornings.
St. Petersburg has a large pier with a very distinctive building at the end, which houses restaurants, patios and shops. Park on the shore (much cheaper than the spaces on the pier itself), and walk out. It's also a great place to get close up and personal with the pelicans.
To continue south, get back on I-275 south and keep going past the Pinellas Bayway. Here you'll pay a toll -- a resounding, wallet-draining $1.25 -- to cross the Sunshine Skyway which stretches right across the entire mouth of Tampa Bay. The whole crossing consists of several shorter bridges connecting islands, and linking to the 4.1 mile (6.67 km) main bridge across the central channel. An earlier bridge of the same name was destroyed in 1980 when a freighter slammed into a main pier during a blinding thunderstorm. The new bridge, opened seven years later, has a higher, longer central span above the shipping channel and the support piers are surrounded by large concrete "dolphin" fenders which will stop any incoming ship before it can strike the pier.
As soon as you come off the Skyway, follow the highway signs to Bradenton. This city has some interesting historic buildings in its downtown district. It's also the headquarters of Tropicana Juice. You'll see a few of those old buildings as you turn right onto Florida route 64 to drive out to the next chain of coastal barrier islands. At the end of Route 64 you are in the town of Holmes Beach on Anna Maria Island. Turning left (south) on Route 789 you soon come to another huge public beach park in Bradenton Beach, You can't miss it because the right side of the road simply widens out to form a sandy parking area hundreds of metres long under the overhanging trees. Just over the dune is the beach proper.
Many of the houses and businesses on Anna Maria Island are old wooden buildings, and have plainly been around for a while. As soon as you cross the next beach to Longboat Key, the atmosphere changes totally. You are now in the presence of money -- big money. It's abundantly clear that you shouldn't even look for a second at property on Longboat if you have to ask the price. These homes have the rarest of all commodities in coastal Florida -- privacy. The road is lined with shrubs, trees, and hedges, and while some houses are visible from the road, many are not. Further south you actually come to a golf course, which is quite an achievement when you realize just how narrow these islands are. It's lined with high rise condos on the far (beach) side.
As the name suggests, it takes a while to drive down the full length of Longboat Key, and then you cross another bridge to St. Armand's Key and you have plainly arrived. The main streets radiating from St. Armand's Circle are a window shopper's paradise, although much of the merchandise for sale is very high end. There are a couple of quirky little gift shops to add to the mix. In one of these shops, way back on my first visit to the Gulf Coast in 2001, I bought this brass plaque:
ON THIS SITE, IN 1883, NOTHING HAPPENED.
I'm still hunting for a suitable place to stick it up. St. Armand's alone among all these resorts doesn't just have a beach -- it has a Lido. Oh, my. From the Circle, you head back to the mainland along a double road with a tree-lined boulevard down the centre, and then across a high bridge to Sarasota.
Sarasota is obviously a temple to big money too, and as you look around you realize that a notable portion of this big money is Old Big Money. This city has some eye-catching mansions, and some gigantic, towering condos that look as if they are eye-catching-mansion wannabes. The high rises are higher than anywhere else along the coast, and more opulent, and more garish. So are the yachts.
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This is also a city where the arts are highly significant, and nothing proves that better than the huge sculpture entitled "Unconditional Surrender" in the waterfront park, based on the famous World War Two era photograph!
Across the street in front of an office tower that same year appeared this pileup of cars.
The big attraction in Sarasota is the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. This ornate building inspired by the classic Italian palaces of the Renaissance, was built by the Ringlings to house their collection of artworks, and to collect others. A quick walk into the courtyard of the museum makes you feel almost as if you have been teleported to Florence!
The Ringling money all came from the Ringling Brothers - Barnum and Bailey Circus, which used to set up winter quarters in Florida every year. The Ringlings chose Sarasota as their home, and single-handedly made it into the place to go for Old and New Money alike in the 1920s and 1930s. The Museum, its beautiful gardens, and its associated exhibitions, including a Circus Museum and the Ringlings' home, Ca d'Zan, are all now affiliated with Florida State University. You can enjoy a good walk through the museums and house, and all around the sizable property and gardens.
Speaking of gardens, while in Sarasota, don't overlook the beautiful Marie Selby Botanical Gardens.
That's a far south as I got on this trip, but shortly I will also get around to blogging about the regions farther south which I have visited previously: Siesta Key, Fort Myers, Sanibel and Captiva Islands, Bonita Beach, and Marco Island.
Part 2 of my coastal tour of Western Florida takes you from the city of St. Petersburg through some more beach towns to the artistic city of Sarasota.
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