January 13 -- another interesting day!

Bodega -- our lunch spot
in St. Pete.

Recently Smoky has been talking about wanting to go to Cuba now that the island is more open. At this point, however, entering as a tourist is still not allowed, but hopefully it will be soon. To get a taste of Cuba, we decided to look for a restaurant serving Cuban cuisine.

Smoky remembered Tampa having a Cuban community many years ago when he was in the Air Force in this region. Even though we searched several times, we didn't find just what we were looking for. When we checked GPS to see how it would route us to Tarpon Springs, our stop for the night, we found ourselves routed through St. Petersburg. On a lark we searched for Cuban food there and found "Bodega" -- a small walk-up cantina cafe on Central Avenue in Downtown, St. Pete, where you can sit at a table on the street or in the back on a covered patio and listen to great salsa music while you eat.

Lechon with jicama slaw and maduros.

This was just the kind of place we had hoped to find. Smoky had lechon, a Cuban-style roast pork with grilled onions, and jicama slaw. The slaw was a wonderful mixture of cucumbers, sliced mango, onions, peppers, and jicama sliced into strips, and topped with a chili lime dressing. I'm hoping to find a similar recipe. I had a coconut marinated chicken breast with the traditional black beans and rice. Very flavorful! Both entrees came with maduros (fried plaintains).

After lunch we drove on to Tarpon Springs where we are staying for a couple of nights. It's always a treat not to have to unpack at night and repack the very next day! I also took advantage of happy hour, which I learned at the Mucky Duck last night for us older folks means the time we get to take a nap. (There have to be some advantages to getting older...)

Tarpon Springs is a focal point of local Greek culture and dining, thanks to early Greek immigrants who settled here to harvest sponges in the waters off the coast. Tomorrow we head to the sponge docks for our own taste treat. We understand the best souvenir is a Greek pastry!

Tonight we went to Sunset Beach, a small spit of land extending into the Gulf. This has been turned into a very nice park, with a performance area, lots of benches and picnic areas, and a great panoramic view of the ocean, especially as the sun sets.

While Smoky was preparing to take some photos of the sunset, we met a "local" artist, Don King. I put local in quotation marks because he came here from up north after retiring. He and Smoky shared a love of photography and sunsets, so their conversation was quite animated. Don shared his website with us. He is currently working in watercolors. Check out his art at donkingwatercolors.com. It is pretty amazing! His subject matter, New York street scenes, is quite unique for watercolor.

Tarpon Springs at Sunset Beach. 

Sunset Beach is a popular spot!

Looking south from Sunset Beach, the view tonight was still great!

Tomorrow we are meeting some high school friends of Smoky's -- Charlie and Becky. They moved from Illinois to Spring Hill, Florida a few years ago.

--Shann