The Columbia Restaurant Panoramic

You'll have to click on this one to get the full view.

This pano was created with 9 shots of this amazing restaurant. I took these shots on Saturday while out with my group on our monthly trolley tour of Tampa.

The Columbia Restaurant is the oldest restaurant in the Ybor City district of Tampa. It was established in 1905 and now there are several chains throughout the Tampa Bay area. None of the chains are anywhere near as ornate as this one, though. This place is a must see. It sits on both sides of a block on N 21st St in Ybor City. All the windows and doorways are framed with beautifully painted tiles.
This is a closeup of some of the tiles above a doorway. The work is stunning, although I don't know who to credit for it.

I haven't gone inside to photograph the interior as of yet, but plan to in the near future. When we were there on Saturday, it was too busy. I'd like to go some time during the week when it's not quite as busy. They serve Cuban Cuisine and although I haven't ate at this one, I've ate at one of the chains and the food was delicious.

Great Egret

We had yet another meetup yesterday and what a fun meetup it was!

We took a trolley tour throughout Tampa. There were 16 of us that started in Ybor City in Tampa. Some of the attendees wondered if we had an itinerary; but that was the beauty of the tour. There was no itinerary, we just bought day tickets (only $5) and rode the trolley until we saw a place where we wanted to get off. Then we'd shoot some photos at that place, grab another trolley and go somewhere else.

As stated, we began in Ybor City and rode to Channelside for our first stop. Channelside is a shopping and entertainment district in front of the Port of Tampa. We photographed that area for a while, then walked over to the Florida Aquarium, which is where I photographed this Great Egret outside the Aquarium in a swamp area.

We got back on another trolley and rode it toward the Tampa Convention Center, where we discovered the beautiful Embasy Suites Hotel. I asked permission to photograph there and it was granted. We all concentrated on the many lines and graphic possibilities when looking straight up from the lobby through the 20 floors to the top. From there, we went outside on one of the terraces where they have a lap pool and sun deck.

Once we had enough of the Embassy Suites, we hopped another trolley and headed back to Ybor City. There we went to the Green Iguana bar/restaurant for dinner. It was so much fun, we've decided to do this sort of thing on a monthly basis. I'll be posting more photos from this meetup as time goes on--if I ever get caught up on editing all the photos I've taken during the last week.

Fountain

This is a very old fountain found on the wall of the Columbia Restaurant in Ybor City, Tampa, FL. If you click on the photo, you can see the amazing detail and all the work that went into creating this fountain.

Throughout Ybor City, one can find some amazing Cuban relics and ornate decor from beautiful mosaic tiles along with sculptured stonework and fountains like this one.

We had a meetup on Monday to do an Ybor City walk-around. For Florida, the weather was quite chilly (60 deg. F)--especially for this time of year. Yet, 23 members showed up for the walk. We split into groups of 5 or 6 and wandered around the city looking to photograph anything we spotted that might be interesting. For me, the most interesting thing I noticed is that the streets were virtually empty. Ybor is one of the busiest places I can think of in the area. The night life is usally blazing with crowds out having a good time.

Most of you from the North would think that 60 deg. is fairly warm, but with us surrounded by water, it really is very chilly. I can remember my daughter visiting one April from upstate NY and it was about 64 deg. F. She was so cold, she went out and bought some sweats to wear. She couldn't believe how cold 64 could feel when we're so close to water.