Integrity Cruise

Day 243: - In Tarpon Springs, FL

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Day 243: Sunday, December 25th: Merry Christmas! A rather significant cold front came roaring through in the wee hours last night. However, it cleared up so all the local folks could enjoy their new toys (boats, motorcycles, bikes, etc.).

We realized that you can see Spanish moss and palm trees in many southern states, but you aren't REALLY in Florida until you can see mangrove trees. Here is a particularly fine specimen growing behind Integrity's slip.

At the head of our pier was a warning and information about Manatees. Ruth wanted to get an image of the placards. We haven't seen any manatees on this trip - yet:

We decided to walk to the "old town" section of Tarpon Springs. On the way we passed Mr. Souvlakis', the restaurant where we had supper two nights ago:

Entering "old town," we passed St. Nicholas Cathedral, the large Greek Orthodox Church serving this community. It was quite traditional:

The Greek community holds a festival every January 6th called the Feast of Epiphany. Part of the festival includes the blessing of the fleet. After the blessing ceremony the archbishop tosses a gold cross into the waters of Spring Bayou. The Greek boys, age 16 to 18 dive for the cross. The one who retrieves the cross is supposed to have good luck for the coming year. This young fellow holds the good luck cross of Epiphany:

We turned off the main street and wandered through the residential area of old town. There were some nice old homes nestled behind lovely gardens featuring "house plants," as Ruth assessed them:

This weathered old church seemed to have been plucked from a Greek village and set down here:

Near the end of the day we got a call from Larry and Lola, our friends aboard Lola Marie. They invited us to come over for fresh shrimp cocktails and we gladly accepted. We have talked about these nice folks, but now here's a picture:

We enjoyed the shrimp and a libation then walked the block to Hella's Restaurant for dinner. Each couple split a delicious lamb kabob. Remember this picture from yesterday's log? This is the place we ate tonight:

After dinner Larry was kind enough to take us back to our marina in their rental car. It was a fun evening!

Position tonight: N28 09.559 W082 45.823

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