Sunday, September 15, 2013

John F. Germany Public Library Downtown Tampa

I've driven past, but never stopped at the John F. Germany Public Library in downtown Tampa before, so yesterday, we headed over there on a whim. I only used my cell phone because it's downtown and I didn't want to be flashing a $1,000 in DSLR equipment around in a parking garage. Not that it's unsafe in downtown Tampa, but you know...you need to be aware of the kind of situations you put yourself in.

I found this link which tells a bit about the man for whom the library is named. (Because though I've lived in this area for 25+ years, I really didn't know who he was! LOL)

Found this shot on the web. Since I drove I couldn't stop to get a shot of the front of the building. LOL Also, the water features have been turned off lately because of drought issues.
You have to park in one of the paid parking garages since it's downtown but they have a covered skywalk to get from the garage to the library itself.


Picture found on Google to help show the walk from external view.
This is the same skywalk but from INSIDE as the picture above.


From the skywalk, looking back at the parking garage and some of the skyline.

The skywalk crossed over a street and you can see some of downtown Tampa's skyline.

After you reach the end of the skywalk, you get to the first building which houses the kids section and the genealogy on another floor. (I wanted to get a photo of a cute near-life sized toy train they had in this area, but some kids ran over to climb on it just as I went to take the shot so I couldn't.)

There's a second sky bridge to connect from the 1st building over to the second.


A shot of the Straz Center (formerly the Performing Arts Center) where they have all kinds of Broadway shows and such.


It's two floors with a "floating" staircase in the middle.
 
 I didn't really get any images inside because there were a lot of people there and I couldn't get a lot of shots without getting them in the frame. Also, sadly, as it's a downtown library, there were a lot of homeless people hanging out there since it has a/c and it felt wrong to take silly pics with a pineapple with them in the background. I didn't want to insult anyone or put them in an undignified photo without permission, you know?

Still, it's a very large building and Anana and I had fun exploring both levels!

Sunday, September 8, 2013

The Florida Aquarium

We finally made it over to The Florida Aquarium on Sunday, September 8th. Located in Downtown Tampa's "Channelside" district, it's down by the ports. (Both commercial and cruise ship.)

Normally, you can always see a cruise ship docked but there wasn't any there today. I went all up and down the port but no such luck. (Boo) So here's a screenshot of Google Street View to show you what it normally looks like! LOL


Now, onto the Aquarium!




I laughed so hard at this sign.


The penguins were being anti-social and way up on the rocks so I wasn't able to get any better shots of them. Darnit!

The largest, creepiest lobsters ever.

Holy crap this fish was MASSIVE. I seriously don't think you can get the scale of how big it was.
It had to have been like 250lbs it was so gigantic!!




This was the largest ray I've ever seen. Little kids were posing in front of it and it was bigger than they were!


Monday, September 2, 2013

Anana on the PeopleMover

I took a minute or so of footage of Anana riding the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover on some of it's journey through Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World.



It's a relaxing, elevated 10-minute ride around Tomorrowland and it goes through several attractions such as Space Mountain as well. We've ridden it before but when we got a front car, I thought it was a good chance to take a little video.

I outlined the route in red and the part in yellow is the section I took the video.


You can also check out Disney's official page about it here.