Tarpon Springs

We met our friends Bill and Leslie in Tarpon Springs today and spent the afternoon exploring this interesting very Greek seaport. We met at Mykoros, a Greek restaurant, where we had some great Greek lemon chicken soup, spanokopita, gyros, and calamari.

From there we strolled down Dodecanese Boulevard which is the "main drag," full of really neat shops. We stopped at The Spice and Tea Exchange where I bought some wonderful varieties of sea salts and seasonings (bought some jalapeno salt for Brother Pat!). We found a shop that had Hawaiian shirts on sale and bought a couple more for Forry; stopped at a some soap shops and bought a few smelly things; bought Forry a frozen slice of Key Lime pie; and enjoyed watching the crowds of tourists.

Towards the end of the Boulevard we found the Tarpon Springs Aquarium and spent a few fun hours checking out their exhibits and watching the interaction with some of their critters. They have a rather large salt water aquarium stocked with local fish like this tarpon --

Or this brightly colored small tropical one --

Or this spiny rock lobster --

They also had five LARGE pythons and a boa constrictor, all of whom had either been someone's pet or had been found in the area around Tarpon Springs. (Neither of these kind of snakes are native to Florida. They are all pets or the off-spring of pets who have either gotten away or been turned loose.) The young man brought this Burmese python out to play with those us who were there. He lifted her head and part of her body over to the ledge of the tank behind him and she crawled the rest of the way out --

Everyone got a chance to pet or touch her as she made her way out --

I was surprised at how you could feel the movements of her muscles as she crawled along the ledge. (That is a big moray eel in the tank behind her.)

Another one of the staff brought this five-year old alligator out to be petted --

This fellow -- so ugly he's cute -- with the small shell and big head is an Alligator Turtle. He's estimated to be 25 or 30 years old and weighs about twenty pounds --

After watching all of those critters, we needed some sustenance, so stopped at one of several Greek bakeries for some treats. One really must have some baklava when you are hanging around the Greeks!

Tarpon Springs is famous for its sponge industry. Divers from Greece settled here to hunt the sponges in the Gulf of Mexico. They use diving suits with helmets to go after the deep ones, so Forry had to pose in this oversized one --

We visited the small museum that was part of the Tarpon Springs Sponge Factory and watched a rather old movie about how the sponges were harvested, then cleaned and prepared for sale like the ones below --

You can't be on the coast without checking out the sunset. We drove out to Howard Park to see it, but it wasn't very good tonight. There are still too many clouds left around from yesterday's storm.

But even when it's not spectacular, sunset on the beach is always nice. We waded in the warm water a bit, then headed back into town for more Greek food.

Leslie and I had some very tender lamb shanks for dinner at a restaurant called Mr. Souvlaki, while Forry had some Greek sausage with peppers and onions and Bill had an interesting dish the restaurant called Greek chow mein.