Wes & Erica go to Tampa, FL, part 2

December was a trying month (but we don't need to talk about that..), regardless, I am determined to travel on my birthday no matter what, and I wanted to celebrate another completed craft show season, so off to Florida we went!! 🌞 I think we did a little less than we usually do when we travel but we both still enjoyed the trip. We only went to three activities -

Coppertail Brewing Night Market-
Coppertail is a local brewery in Ybor, FL. Every second Friday evening, the brewery opens its back parking lot to crafters and artisans for a night market. This was a really fun event with good customer turnout, Oklahoma breweries take note (and allow RagsReborn to be a vendor 😉). There was a good variety of vendors--about 30-40 of them--and they were all handmade. The weather was amazing - 70℉, cool with no wind. The only weird thing was that not many of the vendors were selling Florida themed stuff. I was surprised there wasn't any tshirts, stickers or any of the other usual crafty items with the state outline of Florida printed on them. There was a local rescue there with a litter of eight-week old boxer/German shepherd puppies. They were so cute in their Christmas bandannas! There was only one food truck at the market (they preferred that everyone eat in the taproom but it was PACKED and I was too hungry to wait in line). The food truck was a pizza one. They made our pizzas to order in a little portable brick oven. We ordered a margherita pizza but it didn't have basil. I instantly didn't like it for that reason, that and the crust was burnt. We also got beers (of course, we were at a brewery!). Wes ordered a Day Swim, a coffee & vanilla porter that was pretty good and tasted as expected. I got the Florida Special, which was just your average blonde beer. Nothing special about the beers but the night market was worth going to.

Tampa Art Museum-
The art museum was pretty good but also really small. It was only one floor and we went through it all in about an hour. The gift shop was bigger and had more interesting stuff than the museum did. LOL Wes really liked the Greek & Roman vessels and other statuettes (above). He liked the use of the color black in the artifacts. My favorite thing at the museum was the mummy. Well, it was only a sarcophagus. When the explorers found it, there was no mummy inside. I think if there is a mummy in a museum, it will always be my favorite part of the museum. The drawings on the sarcophagus were really detailed and told an intricate story but I've forgotten it now.

The special exhibit at the museum was a collection of Haitian voodoo flags. They were much more colorful and bejeweled than I thought they'd be (but I know literally nothing about Haitian culture or voodoo so who am I to judge). All of the flags were decorated using either beads or sequins. Many of them depicted St. Jacques who was the leader of the Haitian revolution.

The Florida Aquarium-
The aquarium was amazing and completely worth going to if you ever are in Tampa. The place was gigantic with eight different areas to explore. There was a really good variety of animals and sea life to view. We started in the wetlands section and wandered all the way through to the "Dragons of the Sea" section (my favorite), we skipped the splash pad and 4-D movie theater even though they were included in our ticket. We saw everything from birds to jelly fish to lemurs to lobsters. The wetlands section had all of the birds flying free instead of in cages, which I thought was rad even if we got splashed by a hooded merganser duck several times (like literally each time he swam by us) and almost got shat on by a roseate spoonbill bird. LOL Wes's favorite animal - the snowy egret bird - was in the wetlands, too.

A lot of the exhibits were interactive. I got to "pet" a jelly fish, star fish and a sea anemone. I would have also touched a stingray but he didn't swim close enough to me. An aquarium worker randomly brought out a penguin for us to see (but not touch). The aquarium has a few penguins but they aren't on display, yet. They live in the back for now. My favorite creature (and probably my new favorite animal, sorry okapi) was the leafy seadragon. This thing looks insane and astounding at the same time. It was a medium sized seahorse with branches growing out of it! Just look at it!! Extraordinary!

So that's a wrap for Tampa. If you go, try to go on the second Friday of the month so you can visit the night market. Plan to spend several hours at the aquarium (we probably spent 3-4 hours there). We went on a Monday so it wasn't crowded. You can probably skip the art museum. I didn't mention it but we also took a stroll along the Riverwalk. It was a nice two-mile walk. You start at the art museum and end up at Armatage Works. We spent a day in St. Petersburg as well, more on that next week!