As I sat at the bar overlooking Tampa Bay Harbour and watched the boats bobbing around in the warm January sunshine, I found it hard to believe this was the same spot where the whole world had watched Lieutenant Dan ride out Hurricane Milton in his 20ft sailboat.
Back in October, this entire coast in Florida was battening down the hatches as the second-most destructive tropical cyclone threatened to destroy everything in its path. In the end it wasn’t as bad as feared, and although there was damage and flooding, there was no sign of it when we visited Tampa.
The Sunshine State is a very pleasant 20C in January, which makes it an excellent time to visit. Florida gets so hot in the summer that everyone runs between air-conditioned homes, cars and offices, but winter is when locals come out to play.
And Tampa is somewhere they really do play – it’s a fun city which has been built for people to enjoy their lives, not just endure a 9-5 grind in damp, miserable weather before a hopefully early demise – but maybe that’s just me in the UK.
My teenager Jesse and I hired a car when we flew in and our home for five nights was the very swish Current Hotel Autograph Collection, just 15 minutes from the airport. Many of the city’s hotels are Downtown, but we loved the swanky Rocky Drive area and the fact that we had a beautiful ocean view from our room and a small beach area for a sundowner.
Although the best cocktail is to be had was in the hotel’s fabulous rooftop restaurant Casa Cami, which also has breathtaking views over the city and coast all the way to St Petersburg, as well as knockout margaritas and Mexican cuisine – especially the rolled fried tacos, flautas. It got a bit windy up there the night we had dinner, and while we hardy Brits wore a light sweater, the locals were practically in their ski gear.
We drove to most places because everything we wanted to visit was within a 20-minute radius. You can also catch Ubers – they’re quick and cheap, but the very best thing transport in Tampa is its beautifully restored historic streetcar, which is free and takes you from Downtown to Ybor City.
In fact everything is very accessible in Tampa, which is a city on a bay, offering all the convenience of a swanky Downtown alongside waterside activities, beaches and boats, and lots of green parks. The Tampa Riverwalk along the Hillsborough river links all the tourist attractions, and is where walkers have almost three miles of beautifully lit smooth walkways to dodge the roller skaters and boarders.
They say while folks from the east coast holiday down in Miami, tourists from Ohio in the mid-west tend to come to Tampa, which gives it a very chilled feel. They don’t angrily honk their cars and everywhere feels safe. Whatever Tampa’s first female lesbian mayor Jane Castor is doing, they should roll it out across America.
Tampa is rightfully proud of its mixed Spanish, Italian, Sicilian and Cuban heritage, since Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon arrived here in 1513, and you’ll find tacos rather than burgers on every corner. It’s also a cultural centre and has museums on everything from art to baseball and one in tribute to Henry B Plant – who transformed the swamps of Florida when his railroad and ships arrived in the 1880s.
Before then, only marauding Spanish pirates stopped off along this coast, which is how the city’s football team, the Buccaneers, got its name. You can learn all about the pirate Jose Gaspar, the “last of the Buccaneers”, at the Tampa Historical Centre. Kids will love the pirate ship as well as the Little House on the Prairie-style replica house. My emo teenager spent far longer playing with the mini stove than either of us could have expected.
Also in the same quayside area, dwarfed by the cruise ships, is the Florida Aquarium. As the parent of a daughter obsessed by giant rays, I’ve seen the inside of more aquariums than I’ve had hot dinners. And this one got a giant 10/10 from her for being the most interactive, so much so, a free-flying bird in the lush mangrove area just missed pooing on her head, and she got to play with stingrays, and stroke jellyfish and anemones.
There’s also a brilliant exhibit called Morph’d with four-eyed fish and paddlefish, but I have to admit our favourite part was watching a hungry-looking alligator’s tank being cleaned by nervous staff.
Jesse loves roller coasters, but on the day we visited Busch Gardens, ironically high winds closed some rides. We did get to see plenty of birdlife as flocks of white ibises (US pigeons) threatened to mug us for our Chick-fil-A leftovers.
I suggested we go shopping – Jesse loves shopping even more than watching me wet myself while hang upside down on rides. We headed to the big International Plaza and Bay Street near the airport which is home to 200 regular high street and luxury shops, food court and free parking.
If you want expensive bougie boutiques, then Hyde Park is the place to be seen jumping out of shiny jeep wearing Lulemon to walk your labradoodle. After a breakfast bagel made with spicy jalepenos at Sesame, we were invited to make our own candles at The Candle Pour which I hope will take the edge of the smelly teen’s room at home.
We went for brunch and browsed the book shop at the Anglophile Oxford Exchange across from the University of Tampa. It’s how Americans think we British live – in leather Chesterfields under framed pictures of our ancestors, but the breakfast there is the best in the city.
We also visited Willa’s for dinner, a neighbourhood restaurant that’s got a low-key industrial vibe. The pimento cheese bacon and fried saltines dish is said to be more addictive than crack, which I can confirm.
One day I thought there was a carnival in town because everyone was dressed as pirates – including their dogs – then realised it was for a local Buccs game that night. Tampa also has its annual Gasparilla Pirate Festival in February, when the whole city dresses as pirates – and go yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum (openly drink alcohol in the sunshine).
I will never understand the puritanical aspect of America where drinking in public is illegal, but they make up for it with Tampa’s Latin Quarter – Ybor City, known as the Spanish New Orleans.
Where there is transport, there will be economic growth and, just as the Yukon had its gold rush Ybor City, had a cigar rush from 1886, when Spanish-born Cuban immigrant turned cigar mogul Vicente Martinez opened the first cigar factory. It wasn’t long before immigrants were pouring in to earn money rolling cigars with prized Cuban tobacco leaves in all the new factories.
Before we met our local Ybor tour guide Max Herman (tampabay-tours.com), we had lunch at the family-run Sicilian restaurant, Casa Santo Stefano, with its high ceilings and airy atmosphere. We also learned our first rule in the US – not to over order, but even so, I could have eaten dozens of bowls of their light-as-air calamari fritti mixed with zucchini.
Theatrically dressed in his Panama hat and cane, Max took around Ybor’s late 1800s-built Sicilian, Spanish and Cuban “mutual aid clubs” where for a few cents a month, the workers could access baths, health care and a taste of home. And if “mutual aid clubs” sound a little bit like the Mafia, you’d be right. “They had a hold on this city, for sure,” agreed Max, “but the last of the Mafia were run out of here in the 80s.”
Everything was going so well for Ybor City until the Cuban trade embargo of 1962 and many factories closed. We took the tour of the remaining one, America’s oldest family-run cigar maker JC Newman, and saw cigars still being made on 1930s machines, and an old trapdoor in the cellar where the bosses hid the cash when the Mafia came looking for “protection” money.
A heady fug of cigar smoke hangs over Ybor’s 7th Avenue where smokers can puff away in bars and the area’s protected roosters, which are descended from the first Cubans, scratch out a living. When they go to roost at night in one small gated square which is still officially Cuban land – watched over by a statue of Cuba’s liberator, José Martí, the rest of Ybor comes to life.
The night we went for fun on the strip, I ordered an Uber but something got lost in translation with our Spanish-speaking driver, who took us to Ybor Strip Club instead. “You’ve taken us to a sex club!” my teen shrieked. I couldn’t stop laughing at the innocent mistake – and ordered a taxi quickly to Barrio where we had the tastiest tacos of our trip. I later learned their secret ingredient is whiskey, which explains a lot.
As Ybor’s famous party atmosphere sprung into life, we set off to look for the dead. We met Max and his assistant Amber for a ghost tour of the old social clubs again, but this time in the dark. Amber revealed some of the spots where she had seen floating orbs. I didn’t like to say that also happened to me a few times at Glastonbury ’98.
First stop was the Italian club, where we saw old blood stains in the white marble, then a hospital where a serial killer doctor had done unspeakable things to patients. But the spookiest part of the night was the theatre in the Cuban club, where an had actor died a tragic death. It was a warm night but temperature dropped like a stone as we walked in there.
We saved the best till last on our trip though, and drove out on our final afternoon before the flight home to the Manatee Viewing Centre at Apollo Beach. It’s not the most picturesque place as the manatees are attracted in the winter months to the warmth of the area’s power plant.
But it was magical to watch them all hanging together, not doing very much, but rolling around in the swampy water. “Yep they’re definitely my spirit animal,” chuckled the teenager.
Book it
Virgin Atlantic flies direct between London Heathrow and Tampa with return fares from £429 per person including complimentary food, drink, inflight entertainment and taxes. For further information visit www.virginatlantic.com/ or call 0344 8747 747. This fare is available for departure on 5th February 2025 and is for 7 nights. Prices are subject to change.
For more information on Tampa Bay go to www.visittampabay.com