Our last day in Tampa. We want to visit the Tampa Bay History Center, which opens at ten, so there is no point in getting up and leaving early. Nicoline picks up on social media; I have decided to stay away from facebook altogether until we are back home. We walk the 0.9 mile to the street car station.
The displays outside the Tampa Bay History Center remember the forceful relocation of the Native Americans, American soldiers in foreign wars, and the Tampa street cars.
Inside, the history center starts out with information about the original inhabitants, the Native Americans.
Next, the cigar factories, which were so important to the development of Tampa, and the Cuban connection.
Various miscellaneous displays as well, from the “chads” from the 2000 election to an organization chart of the Mafia in the Tampa area (taking “organized crime” to a whole new level of organization) and a display about the citrus industry.
The History by the Pint special exhibition was less interesting than we expected, although I didn’t know that for a while they made beer cans that had a neck like bottles, so they could use their existing capping machines to cap the cans and did’t have to invest in a whole new line of machinery.
Having gone through the museum, we sit down for lunch in the museum restaurant.
Done with lunch, we walk along the Riverwalk, which is a nice boulevard along the river, before heading back to the street car end point.
We get off the street car where it enters Ybor City and view some signs about the Cuban connection with Tampa.
We continue walking, past the AirBnB to a Winn-Dixie supermarket, before returning home via the Avenida Republica de Cuba. The visit to the supermarket adds another two miles to our walk home; we are rally getting our excercise today.
