usa - Tripatini2024-03-29T09:37:21Zhttps://tripatini.com/group/florida/photos/feed/tag/usaKey West´s frisky gay Island Househttps://tripatini.com/group/florida/photos/island-house-key-west-florida-gay-travel2024-02-11T10:06:21.000Z2024-02-11T10:06:21.000ZDave Actonhttps://tripatini.com/members/DaveActon<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/12218012682?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=400"></div><div><h6><span style="font-size:10pt;"><span style="font-weight:400;">The number of gay guesthouses in Key West has declined over the years - especially the ones with a high ¨sexual temperature,¨but</span> <a href="https://islandhousekeywest.com/"> <span style="font-weight:400;">Island House</span></a><span style="font-weight:400;"> has soldiered on since it first came on the scene decades ago, upgraded it rooms and facilities several years ago, and it's still as frisky as ever, with a couple of sex lounges and clothing-optional pool area and café (where the food is actually pretty good). It´s not cheap - rates for the 34 rooms start at $349 - but you can buy a day pass and have all the fun you want that way (I´ve certainly done that, with more than satisfactory results ,)).</span></span></h6><p> </p><h6><span style="font-size:8pt;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/IslandHouseKW/photos/a.100162202064/10154524453747065/?type=3"><span style="font-weight:400;">Island House</span></a></span></h6><p> </p></div>The Civil Rights ´Freedom Trail´ of St. Augustine: the Woolworth lunch counterhttps://tripatini.com/group/florida/photos/st-augustine-civil-rights-freedom-trail-woolworth-black-travel2024-02-11T10:01:56.000Z2024-02-11T10:01:56.000ZDavid Paul Appellhttps://tripatini.com/members/DavidPaulAppell16<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/12287231285?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=400"></div><div><p>In the history of the Civil Rights movement, names like <span style="font-size:13px;">Little Rock, Birmingham, and Montgomery stand out most in memory. But it was in the USA.´s oldest city the events of 1963 and especially 1964 provided the final shock needed to pass the Civil Rights Act in a balky, filibustering Congress. One of those events was a 1963 sit-it at the lunch counter of the local Woolworth department store.like the more famous one three years earlier at the Woolworth in Greensboro, North Caroliana.</span> Now preserved in the lobby of the Wells Fargo Bank which currently occupies the site, it´s part of this city´s Freedom Trail which visitors can explore through free black heritage tours.<br /><br />Read more in my post <a href="https://tripatini.com/profiles/blogs/st-augustine-florida-critical-in-america-s-black-history-too" target="_blank">St. Augustine, Florida - Critical in the USA´s Black History, Too</a>.<br /> <br /> <br /> <span style="font-size:6pt;"><a href="https://tripatini.com/members/DavidPaulAppell16" target="_blank">David Paul Appell</a></span></p>
<p> </p></div>The Civil Rights Freedom Trail of St. Augustine: Fort Moséhttps://tripatini.com/group/florida/photos/st-augustine-civil-rights-freedom-trail-fort-mose-black-travel2024-02-11T09:59:55.000Z2024-02-11T09:59:55.000ZDavid Paul Appellhttps://tripatini.com/members/DavidPaulAppell16<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/12287229456?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=400"></div><div><p>By 1738, Spanish St. Augustine had been an established garrison town for nearly 175 years and had become a player in the skirmishing between the Spanish and the English in the Americas. In that year, Florida's Spanish governor chartered a new settlement a bit of a ways inland from town. The wooden garrison of <strong>Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mosé</strong> was set up as the first legally sanctioned free African settlement in North America, and became a refuge for escaped slaves from the English colonies in the Carolinas and Georgia - kind of like the original Underground Railroad, but southward instead of northward. Pretty much all the refugees had to do upon reaching <strong>Fort Mose</strong> (as it's since become known, pronounced "mo-<em>zay</em>") was agree to convert to Catholicism, and many unsurprisingly fought for the Spanish against the English on various occasions. Today the original fort is gone, but at the site (declared a National Historic Landmark) there's a very well-designed, multimedia visitor's center (above) that lays out the history, along with some beautiful grounds, including a walkway over a marshland that nature lovers will enjoy.<br /> <br /> Read more in my post <a href="https://tripatini.com/profiles/blogs/st-augustine-florida-critical-in-america-s-black-history-too" target="_blank">St. Augustine, Florida - Critical in the USA´s Black History, Too</a>.<br /> <br /> <br /> <span style="font-size:6pt;"><a href="https://tripatini.com/members/DavidPaulAppell16" target="_blank">David Paul Appell</a></span></p>
<p> </p></div>The Civil Rights 'Freedom Trail' of St. Augustine: Lincolnvillehttps://tripatini.com/group/florida/photos/tyson-family-home-lincolnville-st-augustine-florida2024-02-11T09:50:50.000Z2024-02-11T09:50:50.000ZDavid Paul Appellhttps://tripatini.com/members/DavidPaulAppell16<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/12286174471?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=400"></div><div><p>The modest clapboard house of dentist <strong>Robert B. Hayling</strong>, a local NAACP leader who became the father of the Civil Rights movement in St. Augustine - and was once beaten within an inch of his life - was where he and his coleagues met to plan strategy, and <strong>Martin Luther King Jr.</strong> himself once overnighted. It´s part of the "Freedom Trail" inin St. Augustine´s <strong>Lincolnville</strong> neighborhood <strong>Lincolnville</strong>, founded after the Civil War by freed slaves and named, of course, the president who issued the Emancipation Proclamation.<br /> <br /> Read more in my post <a href="https://tripatini.com/profiles/blogs/st-augustine-florida-critical-in-america-s-black-history-too" target="_blank">St. Augustine, Florida - Critical in the USA´s Black History, Too</a>.<br /> <br /> <br /> <span style="font-size:6pt;"><a href="https://tripatini.com/members/DavidPaulAppell16" target="_blank">David Paul Appell</a></span></p>
<p> </p></div>Ghost tours in St. Augustine are spooky fun, but also educationalhttps://tripatini.com/group/florida/photos/ghost-tours-st-augustine-florida2024-02-11T09:41:48.000Z2024-02-11T09:41:48.000ZTripatinihttps://tripatini.com/members/Tripatini<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/12271691061?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=400"></div><div><p>Tripatini contributor <a href="https://tripatini.com/members/FyllisHockman">Fyllis Hockman</a> writes: <br /> <br /> "At age 458 - founded during the Spanish empire by <strong>Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés</strong> - <a href="https://tripatini.com/profiles/blogs/st-augustine-florida-450-anniversary" target="_blank">St. Augustine</a> is the oldest continuously occupied settlement in the <strong>United States</strong>. There’s a lot to recommend a city that old, including charming colonial architecture and a <em>lot</em> of history - not just stretching back centuries but also including its beginnings as a tourism mecca during the Victorian era, the early 20th century, and even the <a href="https://tripatini.com/profiles/blogs/st-augustine-florida-critical-in-america-s-black-history-too" target="_blank">Civil Rights movement of the 1960s</a>. And of course ghosts. A city that old has a lot of history to haunt -- a lot of death and despair to permeate the landscape -- and the spirits of St. Augustine are sufficient to keep a multitude of ghost tour operators very busy providing a frenzy of frightful fun. And one recent All Hallow´s Eve I tagged along on a couple of them."</p>
<p>Read more in her post <a href="https://tripatini.com/profiles/blogs/ghost-tours-st-augustine-florida" target="_blank">Hailing Halloween on Spooky Ghost Tours in St. Augustine, Florida</a>.</p>
<p><br /> <em><span style="font-size:8pt;">Victor Block</span></em></p></div>An essential gadget on a St. Augustine ghost tourhttps://tripatini.com/group/florida/photos/st-augustine-ghost-tours-electromagnetic-field-transmitter2024-02-11T09:38:21.000Z2024-02-11T09:38:21.000ZTripatinihttps://tripatini.com/members/Tripatini<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/12378313876?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=400"></div><div><p>Tripatini contributor <a href="https://tripatini.com/members/FyllisHockman">Fyllis Hockman</a> writes:<br /><br />"At the beginning of our tour, Brian, our guide and historic/haunted/site veteran, passed out electromagnetic field transmitters to aid in our search for otherwise unrecognizable companions; supposedly their energy is recorded on the readers, which tend to beep loudly in response. Or it could just mean that there’s a computer nearby. Hard to tell." <br /><br />Read more in her post <a href="https://tripatini.com/profiles/blogs/ghost-tours-st-augustine-florida" target="_blank">Hailing Halloween on Spooky Ghost Tours in St. Augustine, Florida</a>.</p>
<p> </p></div>Tampa's colorful, cultural Ybor City districthttps://tripatini.com/group/florida/photos/tripatini-group-florida-pic-ybor-city-visit-tampa-bay2022-11-13T15:25:43.000Z2022-11-13T15:25:43.000ZTripatinihttps://tripatini.com/members/Tripatini<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/10881242298?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=400"></div><div><p><span style="font-weight:400;">Named after <strong>Vicente Martínez-Ybor</strong>, one of several Cuban cigar manufacturers who founded and developed this town, now a Tampa neighborhood just northeast of downtown, in the 1880s this was a thriving Latino immigrant community until the Great Depression when it declined almost to the point, in the 1970s, of abandonment. Since the 1980s, though, Ybor City has been designated a National Historic Landmark District and has rebounded and gentrified, with </span><span style="font-weight:400;">many shops, restaurants, cafés, bars, and other nightspots opening. These days, in fact, Ybor is considered one of Tampa's prime entertainment magnets. <br /><br />Read more about Tampa in Tripatini member <a href="https://tripatini.com/members/JuliaHomes">Julia Homes</a>' post <a href="https://tripatini.com/profiles/blogs/tampa-florida-attractions-travel-guide" target="_blank">5 Highlights in and around Tampa, Florida</a>.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:8pt;"><em><a href="https://www.visittampabay.com/districts/ybor-city/" target="_blank">Visit Tampa Bay</a></em></span><br /></span></p>
<p> </p></div>The iconic Sunshine Skyway between Tampa and St. Petersburghttps://tripatini.com/group/florida/photos/florida-tampa-st-petersburg-sunshine-skyway-bridge2022-11-13T15:03:02.000Z2022-11-13T15:03:02.000ZTripatinihttps://tripatini.com/members/Tripatini<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/10881233860?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=400"></div><div><p><span style="font-weight:400;">If you drive to nearby <strong>St. Petersburg</strong> aka <strong>St. Pete</strong> (itself an exciting destination), you'll cross this toll bridge, a continuation of a multi-lane highway. You'll see amazing views of the ocean and coast, and it's also an amazing sight experience the stunning landscape. Furthermore, three years ago a $15.6-millio nighttime LED light system was installed that cycles through animated routines. And there's even a fishing pier where you can pull your car over for a spell.<br /> <br /> Read more about Tampa in Tripatini member <a href="https://tripatini.com/members/JuliaHomes">Julia Homes</a>' post <a href="https://tripatini.com/profiles/blogs/tampa-florida-attractions-travel-guide" target="_blank">5 Highlights in and around Tampa, Florida</a>.<br /> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;"><br /> <span style="font-size:8pt;"><em><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SunshineSkywayBridge-4SC_6643-15.jpg" target="_blank">Robert Neff</a></em></span> </span></p>
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