Venice

Yesterday, Sunday January 22, Sherry and I made a trip to Venice. (Venice, Florida) Venice was a favorite cruise destination when we had a sailboat. We just wanted to walk around and see the places we used to go.

We parked on Venice Avenue (near the bottom of the picture below) and walked along the avenue.  We  meant to go to our favorite ice cream shop, The Soda Fountain, which actually does have a soda fountain, the only one I have seen in the last forty years.  But, walking up and down Venice Avenue, we didn't find it.  We decided it must have closed and gave up and went to a generic ice cream shop for hot fudge sundaes.

After finishing our hot fudge sundaes, we walked down Venice Avenue toward the beach (right to left at the bottom of the picture.)  We found The Soda Fountain in the next block west of where we gave up looking for it.

The beach was a popular place right at the end of Venice Avenue.



But just a bit further north, it was almost deserted.

We walked along the beach for a while, then back to the street that runs along the beach.  We wanted to visit  The Crow's Nest Marina , where we used to park our boat when we came to Venice. 

You can see the location of the Crow's Nest in the first picture, near the upper left corner. If you look closely, you can see the two jetties that protect the channel into The Venice Inlet .

We stopped for drinks at the Crow's Nest Tavern, and then walked out to the South Jetty

Here is a boat coming into Venice Inlet, with the North Jetty in the background.

Beachfront condos seen from the South Jetty.

A pelican in the channel beside the South Jetty.

I'm sure these are common water birds, but I have not been able to identify them.

Sherry took this sunset picture from the South Jetty

Once the sun set, we headed back to Tampa.  But we had to stop in Gulfport for dinner at Backfin Blue.  Old favorites from our boating days,  corn and crab chowder and bacon wrapped, basil stuffed, BBQ shrimp.