Travel Highlight: St. Pete, Florida
Here's our monthly highlight of cool places to visit!
February and March are some of the very best months to visit Florida, so if you’re planning a little trip in the next couple months, St. Pete would be a great pick! St. Pete is a quirky, walkable city that has some of the best beaches and best museums in all of Florida. (Trust me; our family has been to a lot of beaches and museums.) Here are some of the highlights you’ll see in this newsletter:
Fort DeSoto North Beach
Imagine Museum
St. Pete Pier
Fort DeSoto North Beach
Our family’s opinion is that a good beach is an uncrowded beach. When we’ve visited Fort DeSoto’s North Beach on weekdays in wintertime, it’s felt like the ocean was a playground that we got to enjoy all to ourselves. The special thing about Fort DeSoto is that you can wade in the water for a long, long way, walking on sandbars from island to island. The water is shallow and crystal clear. Pack a picnic for a long, beautiful day. Just shuffle your feet and watch out for stingrays!
A $5 parking fee gets you in for the day.
Favorite Museums
Imagine Museum
The Imagine Museum is a hidden gem. Trish Duggan is a local philanthropist and glass enthusiast who created this museum to inspire a love for the glass arts. Friends, it’s crazy what people can do with glass. (It’s not all blown glass, and in our opinion, this museum is much more interesting than the famous Chihuly museum nearby.)
For example, you could look into this Portal Icosahedron by Anthony James from all different angles and still have trouble understanding exactly how it works.
That’s the whimsy we appreciate the most about glass art at the Imagine Museum; you can just look into a piece for a long time, and walk all around it, and you still won’t have a clue how the artist made it.
If you’re nervous about taking little ones to a glass museum, that’s a valid concern. If your kids aren’t able to maintain a “museum posture,” this one might not be for you. But it’s an excellent museum that our kids have enjoyed many times. You might just be surprised.
Ticket prices range from $5-15 depending on when you go, or you can get in free if you have a pass with NARM reciprocal benefits.
Museum of Fine Arts
The Museum of Fine Arts St. Pete is fantastic. Not every city can boast that it has a Monet and multiple O’Keeffe’s—which are so fantastic to see in person—but the MFA has so much more than that. You can see what’s in their permanent collection here. The global art and ancient artifacts are extremely impressive, and overall it’s just a very enriching time. There’s so much to see.
Here’s a tip for whenever you visit museums: ask the security guards what their favorite piece is. They spend a lot of time with the art and they’ve overheard every tour that’s offered. The security staff at the MFA have told us all kinds of interesting secrets and insights into the art here.
Adult tickets are $20, kids 7-17 are $10, and children six and under are free.
St. Pete Pier
Locals waited for a long time for the new St. Pete Pier to be finished, and it delivers. Visiting the pier is a gorgeous way to take a long stroll, and enjoy the views and breeze without getting sandy. It’s a wonderful place for kids to run around and explore, and the Glazer Family Playground is top-notch, with lots of open-ended play for kids.
You also can’t miss this fantastic net art installation by Janet Echelman; you can see some videos about her on Youtube, watch her TedTalk, and talk to your kids about resourcefulness (one of our themes for February 😉) and thinking outside the box.
St. Pete as a whole is a wonderful place for art, and you’ll find murals and sculptures galore.
The Pier is free; you just have to pay for parking.
Other Museums
As previously mentioned, there’s a wealth of other museums in St. Pete and our family has visited most of them.
Sunken Gardens and the Great Explorations Children’s Museum are right next to each other and, though they’re small and a little dated, it’s a fun day with kids. Sunken Gardens boasts its own rainbow eucalyptus tree, which is crazy cool.
Both attractions are about $15/person but they’re also free with AHS and NARM/ASTC reciprocal memberships, respectively. If you’re confused about all this talk about reciprocal memberships, you can watch this video.
The Florida Holocaust Museum is painful to visit, but it’s a good field trip. They have a big emphasis on fighting racism and hatred of all kinds, and advocating for people who might not be able to speak for themselves. You can also check their calendar to see if there will be a holocaust survivor sharing their story on the day you visit.
Tickets range from $0-$16 per person. It’s also free with NARM.
The Dali is probably the most famous museum in St. Pete, and there are indeed some impressive pieces in the building and in the gardens outside. The architecture of the building itself is beautiful. However, Dali’s art is purposefully twisted and portrays women in negative, troubling ways that reflected his own views. Though the museum is high-quality and designed to be kid-friendly, we recommend checking out some of the other museums in St. Pete first.
Tickets are $29 for adults or $12 for kids, or free with NARM.
Getting Around
We compiled all these locations in one place on Google Maps for you here. As you’ll see, many of the attractions are close together.
Wandering around downtown is easy, and it’s always fun to look at all the boats on the marinas. You can use the free Downtown Looper to get around, too.
Tampa, Bradenton, and Sarasota are all beautiful cities in their own right, too, if you want to squeeze in several Gulf cities in one trip.
Obviously, there’s plenty more to do in this city that we left out, but hopefully it was a helpful little guide!
See you for the regularly scheduled content on Monday!
Warmly,
Hope from Family Scripts