Egmont Key

The Don CeSar

St. Pete Beach (Gulf front)

The Pink Palace of St. Pete Beach — the 1928 Gatsby-era landmark rising flamingo-pink over the Gulf, with Egmont Key on its horizon, two pools in the sand, and the grande-dame service that made it the coast's postcard.

TradeWinds Island Grand Resort

St. Pete Beach (Gulf front, mid-strand)

St. Pete Beach's family mothership — a sprawling Gulf-front resort of pools, paddleboats on its own canals, the giant inflatable waterslide on the sand, and enough on-property program that the car keys gather dust.

The Hotel Zamora

St. Pete Beach south end, at Pass-a-Grille

The boutique by the island boats — Mediterranean-styled rooms at St. Pete Beach's quiet south end, a rooftop bar with 360 views from Gulf to bay, and the Pass-a-Grille lanes and Shell Key shuttle minutes from the door.

The Vinoy Resort & Golf Club, Autograph Collection

Downtown waterfront, St. Petersburg

Downtown St. Pete's 1925 waterfront grande dame — salmon-pink Mediterranean revival over the yacht basin, freshly restored, with the Dalí, the Pier, and the arts district at walking range and its own golf and marina across the park.

Sandpearl Resort

North Clearwater Beach (Gulf front)

Clearwater Beach's homegrown luxury — the locally owned Gulf-front resort on the quiet north strand, zero-entry lagoon pool, Camp Ridley for the kids, and the rescue aquarium and marina fleet minutes down the sand.

Tampa Marriott Water Street

Water Street / Riverwalk, Tampa

The Riverwalk's cornerstone hotel — towers over the convention-center bend with the water taxi at the dock, Sparkman Wharf and the aquarium a stroll, and the Water Street district's restaurant mile out the lobby door.

Epicurean Hotel, Autograph Collection

SoHo / Hyde Park, Tampa (across from Bern’s)

The hotel built by a steakhouse — across the street from Bern's legendary wine cathedral in Tampa's SoHo district, with a culinary theater, charcuterie-stocked lobby, rooftop bar, and food as the entire design language.

Egmont Key Ferry

The only scheduled ride to the island — the Tampa Bay Ferry runs from Fort De Soto's bayside across the shipping channel to Egmont Key, dolphins escorting most crossings, with hours ashore among the lighthouse, fort ruins, and empty Gulf beach.

Egmont Key Snorkel & Dolphin Cruise

Snorkel a sunken fortress — cruises from Fort De Soto and John's Pass pair dolphin-watching with mask-and-fin time over Fort Dade's drowned gun batteries, where sheepshead and snook patrol hundred-year-old concrete in clear green Gulf water.

Egmont Key Lighthouse & Fort Dade

A ghost town with a working heart — the 1858 lighthouse still guides Tampa Bay's ships while Fort Dade's brick streets, gun batteries, and powder magazines crumble around it, walked free once you're ashore and narrated by shorebirds.

Fort De Soto Park

The五-island county park that keeps topping America's-best-beach lists — North Beach's lagoon and sugar sand, the 1898 fort and its big mortars, seven miles of paddling and bike trail, and the Egmont ferry's home dock. One parking fee buys it all.

Shell Key Shuttle

The sandbar wilderness next door — a short shuttle from Pass-a-Grille lands you on an unbridged preserve island of shell-strewn beach and seabird colonies, the bay's barefoot answer to Egmont's bricks: no ruins, no shade, pure Gulf.

Clearwater Marine Aquarium

The rescue hospital that became a movie star — the working marine-rescue center behind the Dolphin Tale films, where resident dolphins, sea turtles, and manatees are patients first and the mission is release. Smaller than a mega-aquarium, and prouder of it.

John's Pass Dolphin Cruise

The bay's reliable dolphin ticket — cruises from John's Pass Village work the Intracoastal's resident bottlenose pods between a boardwalk of fish shacks and pirate kitsch, with sunset runs the connoisseur's slot. Easy, cheap, and it delivers.

Salvador Dalí Museum

The finest Dalí collection outside Spain, improbably in St. Petersburg — melting-clock masterworks inside a hurricane-proof concrete cocoon with a glass bubble bursting out of it, downtown on the waterfront. The bay's world-class culture hour.

The Florida Aquarium

Tampa's downtown anchor under the shell-shaped dome — a walk through Florida's own waters from spring-fed wetlands to coral reef, with river otters, free-flight herons, a serious coral-rescue lab, and the channel district at the door.

Busch Gardens Tampa Bay

Florida's coaster capital with a serengeti inside it — Iron Gwazi's record-breaking hybrid headlines a lineup Orlando can't match, running alongside a genuine 65-acre African plain of giraffes, rhinos, and the train that tours them.

ZooTampa at Lowry Park

Florida's warmest-hearted zoo — manatee critical care you can watch, Florida panthers and red wolves, Indian rhino encounters, and a shaded, stroller-scaled layout that families rank above parks twice its size.

Pirate Water Taxi

Tampa's Riverwalk by boat — hop-on-hop-off pirate-flagged taxis loop the Hillsborough River's stops from Armature Works to the aquarium, the cheapest scenic cruise in town and secretly its best transit. Day passes, cold drinks, zero parking.

Sunken Gardens

St. Pete's century-old roadside Eden — four acres of ancient banyans, cascades, and flamingos sunk fifteen feet below street level, saved by the city from the bulldozer era. An unhurried garden hour the beach week secretly needs.