Things I miss about Tampa
We’re driving home to Baton Rouge from our vacation in Tampa. I’m blogging from a wi-fi hotspot generated by my husband’s Palm Pre. Awesome. We waited in a traffic jam outside of Gainsville for almost an hour. An 18-wheeler jack-knifed across two lanes. So, I’m sitting here in the car thinking about what I miss about Tampa, a place I called home for ten years. Friends and family are the obvious top of the list, so let’s skip that one. In no particular order:
1. Disney – Grueling in August, when we usually go, but magical during the cooler weather. (Magical is cliche, but apt.)
2. Orange blossoms – Not only do they smell divine, they smell of divinity.
3. Cuban food – From the dive at the strip mall to the fanciest restaurant, can’t go wrong with black beans and yellow rice.
4. Concerts and touring companies – Because Tampa is a big city, it gets nearly all the major concert tours and other cultural events. There are many venues and a variety of big and alt/indie things to do.
5. The Tampa Theatre – A historical landmark building, a renovated 1920s movie theater, the Tampa theater offers all sorts of independent and off beat movies and oldies. It also has an old-time organ which is played by an organist before the movie.
6. Independent movies – On that note, the Tampa Bay Area has multiple theaters that offer indie, foreign, and limited-release movies. Baton Rouge has an indie movie maybe once a month.
7. The beach – I’m not a beach person. I hate the sand and you can’t have a beach experience without it. However, over the years I’ve developed a limited tolerance of it and I’ve cultivated elaborate rituals to avoid it. When I can manage avoiding the sand, I enjoy the beach immensely. This vacation I had all the accouterments and I have the sunburn to prove it.
8. The football culture – This is a complicated one. Tampa has changed greatly since I left. When l Iived there, the Bucks were a joke and USF didn’t have a football team. Consequently, the football culture was minimal in Tampa (not in other cities, obviously, since Florida is a football state through and through). I lived ten blissful football free years.
9. Bougainvillaes – Beautiful flowering bushes in all sorts of colors. They are in a dead heat with the crepe myrtle in Louisiana. They are lush and tropical whereas crepe myrtle are more flouncy and southern.
10. Good grocery stores – Florida has Publix, which is an amazing grocery store with great food choices. It’s not upscale gourmet like Calandro’s, it’s just a nice grocery store with an excellent bakery and deli. They offer a lot of food that is prepped and ready to cook. We used to buy yummy fresh fish – boned, cleaned, and spiced - that we just tossed on the hibachi or in the oven. Publix always has quality produce too. It’s more expensive than, say, Winn Dixie, but it’s a better class of food. Plus, their commercials are always clever.
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