Bay city rollers
Soaks up the sun and cigars in booming Tampa Bay
Coming face to face with a wild rooster and his friends was not what I’d envisaged for my trip to Tampa Bay, but this destination is full of surprises.
The busy, modern downtown sits happily alongside the historic Ybor
City – the cigar capital of the world – and it gives better-known Floridian destinations a run for their money.
Tampa is booming, with hundreds of people moving to the city every week.
Sat by a bay on Florida’s Gulf coast, it has year-round sunshine, incredible restaurants and attractions to keep the whole family entertained – so it’s easy to see why it
is becoming so popular.
History
Tampa has a rich heritage dating back to the 1780s and the mythical pirate Jose Gaspar who is rumoured to have visited Tampa many times.
Gaspar is celebrated every January with a ‘Gasparilla’ parade, which sees beads and coins thrown to the crowd along the Bayshore Boulevard.
This pirate legacy is seen throughout the city with a pirate ship permanently moored in the harbour and many bars and restaurants giving a nod to the theme.
Cigars are probably Tampa’s most famous export, however, with the creation of Ybor City by Vicente Martinez Ybor in 1885 transforming a town of 700 people into 16,000 by 1900.
At its peak in the early 1900s there were 150 cigar factories in Ybor making 500 million cigars by hand each year.
Now there is only one working cigar factory left in the city – the J. C. Newman ‘El Reloj’, which offers $15 guided tours on weekdays.
On our trip to the factory we saw the intricate craftsmanship that goes into making a cigar, with highly trained staff going through