8 a.m. Spend up for eggs out<\/p>\n
Wake up early and head over to Cozy Uptown Eats<\/a> for their excellent homemade scones ($5) and biscuits ($4), filling breakfast sandwiches on brioche buns, or their Gouda and white pepper grits with bacon, collard greens and a fried egg ($12), which sells out as often as the sun shines. Alternatively, drive west to Gulfport, a small, artsy city bordering St. Pete and Stella\u2019s<\/a>, a terrific breakfast option with plentiful outdoor seating that\u2019s named after the owner\u2019s late aunt, a nun from Manhattan\u2019s Lower East Side. Favorites like the Mel\u2019s breakfast burrito ($14.99) are, as advertised, a \u201chard habit to break.\u201d<\/p>\n 9:30 a.m. Experience the city on wheels<\/p>\n Arrive early at the <\/a>Saturday Morning Market<\/a>, where you can buy souvenirs at stalls like Blue Twist & Co (cool art prints) or treats from Caribbean Quenched (fruit smoothies). Then take a bike tour; there are several to choose from. <\/a>St. Pete Biking<\/a> takes visitors to see more than 40 murals painted by local and international artists ($59 or $79 for an e-bike). The African American Heritage Association<\/a> offers tours along the African American Heritage Trail<\/a>, including private biking tours led by Hillary Van Dyke<\/a>, a visiting professor at the University of Tampa, and a first-Saturday-of-the-month trolley tour<\/a>. Email the association at info@aahasp.org. Josette Green, a local historian, leads <\/a>tours<\/a> to historically African American neighborhoods like Pepper Town, Methodist Town and the Deuces, detailing ugly aspects of the city\u2019s history, such as the Jim Crow era, when Black residents were effectively prohibited from venturing north of Central Avenue after dark.<\/p>\n 12 p.m. Pick your sport: Baseball, tennis, pickleball \u2014 or shopping?<\/p>\n St. Pete was the venue for the first Major League Baseball spring training camp, in 1914, and the subsequent presence of Babe Ruth and other sluggers at hotels like the Don Cesar<\/a> and the Vinoy<\/a> boosted tourism. The city is still a great base for spring training (Feb. 21 to March 24), so try to take in a Yankees, Phillies or Blue Jays game, as they\u2019re all within a half hour\u2019s drive. Before you go, order a pair of lobster salad rolls (two for $10) online from Mazzaro\u2019s<\/a>, St. Pete\u2019s deservedly popular Italian market, or a chicken tikka masala Bollywood bowl ($12.25) at Twisted Indian<\/a>, a terrific fast casual Indian eatery on Central Avenue. If baseball\u2019s not your thing, book a tennis or pickleball lesson at the Racquet Club of St. Petersburg<\/a> and then enjoy lunch al fresco in the club\u2019s delicious eatery, Root + Clay<\/a>, which has superb chimichurri chicken sandwiches ($14). If shopping rather than sports suits your tastes, the Grand Central District has a host of shops. ARTpool<\/a>, for example, has a huge selection of reasonably priced vintage clothing and records, and Tombolo Books<\/a> is a small independent bookstore that\u2019s particularly well stocked with L.G.B.T.Q. and progressive authors. Farther east along Central Avenue toward downtown, Florida CraftArt<\/a> is a nonprofit gallery that sells original paintings, sculptures and crafts from more than 200 Florida artists at reasonable prices.<\/p>\n 4 p.m. Experience the St. Pete art scene<\/p>\n The Burg punches above its weight on the museum front, so pick one based on your interests. At the stunning Dal\u00ed Museum<\/a> ($32) you\u2019ll see every stage of Salvador Dal\u00ed\u2019s life and work and will learn that he wasn\u2019t always a surrealist. The Museum of Fine Arts<\/a> ($22) is in a stunning building and has an impressively curated and diverse collection of art and artifacts from ancient to contemporary with something for everyone. The James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art<\/a> ($23) is a must for those who like Native American art. If you\u2019re traveling with children, let your kids indulge their curiosity and have fun playing at the Great Explorations Children\u2019s Museum<\/a> ($15 kids\/$12 adults), which has interactive exhibits like a mini Publix grocery store, a doctor\u2019s office and a fossil park.<\/p>\n 6 p.m. Feast on Old World Italian<\/p>\n Book a table outside at Pia\u2019s Trattoria<\/a> in Gulfport and you\u2019ll feel like you\u2019ve been invited to a wedding party somewhere in Italy\u2019s Mezzogiorno. Their homemade ciabatta ($6 half loaf\/$8 full) with olive oil is absolutely worth the carb splurge and their veal parmigiana ($35) with house-made linguini and lasagna with grass-fed, free-range Florida beef ($21) are divine. Take a neighborhood passegiata (stroll) and then cap the night with some quality craft beers at Webb\u2019s City Cellar<\/a> or 3 Daughters Brewing<\/a>, which frequently has bands on weekends. On a hot night, enjoy the people watching at the block of bars immediately south of Williams Park downtown or do a beach bar crawl on St. Pete Beach starting at Coconut Charlies<\/a> heading south to Salty\u2019s Tiki Bar<\/a> in the Tradewinds resort.<\/p>\n 8 p.m. Travel in the footsteps of Jack Kerouac<\/p>\n Jack Kerouac\u2019s estate was valued at just $91<\/a> when he died in 1969 and he left it all to his mom, Gabrielle. Years of legal battles followed after her death in 1973, and in 2020, Ken Burchenal, a local Kerouac fan, purchased it and turned it into a nonprofit arts center<\/a> and vacation rental<\/a>. For a $100 donation, you can book a private tour of this three-bedroom midcentury home, which has been preserved exactly as the writer left it. On weekends, the house is often the venue for poetry and book readings, Saturday night concerts and a host of other events<\/a>. And if you\u2019d like to drink at one of Kerouac\u2019s haunts, visit the Flamingo Sports Bar<\/a>, which has a mural on the wall of Kerouac shooting pool and still looks a lot like it did back when he used to frequent it, often during daylight hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"8 a.m. Spend up for eggs out Wake up early and head over to Cozy Uptown Eats for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[8978,8979,1618,969,8982,8981,4779,687,8980,8976,202,204,203,199,201,200,8977],"class_list":["post-8899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-culture-arts","tag-dali","tag-fla","tag-jack","tag-kerouac","tag-museum-st-petersburg","tag-museums","tag-restaurants","tag-salvador","tag-st-petersburg-fla","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-travel-and-vacations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}