Visitors to Busch Gardens Tampa Bay can feed giraffes on an interactive tour of the gardens’ Serengeti Plain. Courtesy Busch Gardens Tampa Bay
By Herb Sparrow
Twice a day, dressed in tuxes, they walked down a red carpet to greet visitors. They are not royalty, movie stars or maitre d’s, but some of the newest residents of the Florida Aquarium in Tampa, Fla.
Two African black-foot penguins do a “meet-and-greet” in the aquarium lobby at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. every day.
“There are no borders or boundaries between the guests and the penguins,” said Tom Wagner, public relations director for the aquarium. “It really is up-close and personal interaction.”
If the penguins could talk, they could tell the visitors about the many diverse options in the Tampa Bay area, including several other opportunities to get personal with wild animals.
“Diversity is what we like to promote,” said Shari Bailey, national sales manager for the Tampa Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau. “It’s the attractions, the port, sports — just a city that has something for everyone.”
Although that may sound like the usual promotional prattle, Bailey is right. The diverse area, which embraces not only the city of Tampa — Florida’s third most populous city — but extends like a horseshoe around Tampa Bay to include St. Petersburg and Clearwater and their 35 miles of white sand beaches, has a wide range of options for groups.
There is the aquarium; a family-style zoo; a wide assortment of history and art museums; the largest science center in the Southeast; dinner and sightseeing cruises; professional baseball, football and hockey teams; shopping; and a variety of festivals throughout the year, from pirates who take over the city in January to a Latin American art festival in November.
And some of the attractions have varied options of their own. Busch Gardens is a multilayered site where you can get a vicarious thrill by watching two sets of riders screaming aboard Gwazi — the Southeast’s largest and fastest double wooden roller coaster — if you don’t want to hop aboard yourself; see gorillas, chimpanzees and alligators in the adjacent Myombe Reserve; and head over to the Marakesh Theater for a 1940s Hollywood musical review.
“There is so much versatility to the park,” said a park spokeswoman.
The Tampa Performing Arts Center, the largest of its kind in the Southeast, has five theaters where you can choose from symphony, grand opera, cabaret-style theater and Broadway hits, along with a restaurant and shops.
The historic Ybor City area is filled with galleries, shops, restaurants, nightspots and museums set along brick-lined walkways framed with wrought-iron balconies and period streetlights.
Don’t pet the sharks The 12-year-old Florida Aquarium tells Florida’s water story from freshwater wetlands to bays, beaches and coral reefs with more than 10,000 aquatic plants and animals, among them otters, alligators, sea horses, spiny lobsters, stingrays, moray eels, rainbow parrotfish and queen angelfish.
Behind-the-scenes tours provide a look at how food is prepared for the animals and an opportunity to feed sharks.
In addition to the penguins, another way for brave souls to get close to the animals is the Dive With the Sharks program. Although limited to two people at a time, the dive program provides great entertainment for onlookers.
The 30-minute dive takes place in the 93,000-gallon Shark Bay, home to shark species from around the world, including sand tiger sharks, zebra sharks, nurse sharks and black tip reef sharks, along with a green sea turtle.
“The sand tiger is probably the most awe inspiring,” said Wagner. “It has a full set of teeth in a permanent grin. They look more scary than they actually are.
“They are the star attraction as far as sharks, but the Goliath grouper steals the show. It weights 200 pounds and often hovers next to the scuba diver; sometimes it rests its head on the diver’s head.
“When you sit next to a 200-pound fish, it gets your attention,” he said.
Penguins and giraffes The Serengeti Plain at Busch Gardens, with its free-roaming herds of animals such as giraffes, zebras, bongos, elands, wildebeests, antelopes and gazelles, was the first of its kind in the United States.
“The giraffes are king; they are everybody’s favorite,” said a guide aboard a flatbed truck that takes visitors on a hands-on tour through the plain. During the tour, visitors get to feed the giraffes, who snap up leaves with their long, looping tongues.
If you don’t want to stand in the back of a bouncing truck, you can get a good look at the Serengeti Plain aboard a steam train that you can catch at various points around the park.
Another place where you can feed giraffes is the Lowry Park Zoo.
“We are well-known for a lot of interactive exhibits where you can interact with animals,” said Rachel Nelson, public relations director for the zoo. “It is something we are very proud of.
“All guests are welcome at the giraffe feeding platform, where we sell rye crackers. And we have as stingray touch pool.”
The zoo’s new Ituri Forest, which opened this year, has several new African species, including cheetahs, okapi, pygmy hippos, Red river hogs and shoebill storks.
“All but the shoebill storks are new to the zoo,” said Nelson.
You can see the fascinating manatees at the zoo’s manatee hospital, where sick, injured or orphaned manatees are rehabilitated for release back into the wild.
“We can do X-rays, surgeries and tests,” said Nelson. “We have two main viewing pools for those doing well and good candidates for release. We have an adjacent theater for keeper talks.”
In the early 1880s, Tampa was a small fishing village on the Florida Gulf Coast. Then, in 1884, entrepreneur Henry B. Plant extended the railroad to the town and built the exotic Tampa Bay Hotel in 1891, and the boom was on.
The Tampa Bay Hotel, with its Moorish architecture, onion-shaped minarets and extensive amenities, became a favorite winter resort for the rich and famous.
Now part of the University of Tampa, the building has one wing that is a museum that shows what it was like for early Tampa tourists such as Babe Ruth, Thomas Edison and Sarah Bernhardt.
Other late-19th-century visitors are the reason the building is a National Historic Landmark. During the Spanish American War, it was the headquarters for the American force, including future president Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, before it left for Cuba.
Cigar-making center A year after Plant brought the railroad to Tampa, Cuban exile Vicente Martinez Ybor moved his cigar-manufacturing business from Key West to an area east of Tampa. More cigarmakers soon followed, and the area that became Ybor City boomed with more than 200 cigar factories.
Although the cigar industry has declined, you can still watch talented craftsmen hand-roll leaves of tobacco into cigars at the Ybor City Museum and other locations.
The museum, located in a historic former bakery, gives a good background on the area. It includes a restored casita, the shotgun-style house of a typical early-20th-century cigar worker.
Ybor City’s renovated historic buildings are now filled with artisan galleries, clothing stores, shops, restaurants, nightclubs and coffeehouses, where you can get the traditional café con leche.
Operated by the same family since 1905, Columbia Restaurant is a central fixture of Ybor City. It fills an entire block and can seat 1,700 people in several dining rooms that are extensively decorated with painted tiles.
“There are so many tings we can do with groups,” said Angie Geml, the restaurant’s marketing and public relations manager. “There is always someplace to put somebody.”
You can even arrange to be entertained by the restaurant’s famous flamenco dancers while you dine.
From black-and-white penguins to flamenco dancers in bright red costumes, Tampa offers a colorful and diverse destination for groups.
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