As I sat at the bar overlooking Tampa Bay Harbour and watched the boats bobbing around in the warm January sunshine, I found it hard to believe this was the same spot where the whole world had watched Lieutenant Dan ride out Hurricane Milton in his 20ft sailboat.
Back in October, this entire coast in Florida was battening down the hatches as the second-most destructive tropical cyclone threatened to destroy everything in its path. In the end it wasn’t as bad as feared, and although there was damage and flooding, there was no sign of it when we visited Tampa.
The Sunshine State is a very pleasant 20C in January, which makes it an excellent time to visit. Florida gets so hot in the summer that everyone runs between air-conditioned homes, cars and offices, but winter is when locals come out to play. And Tampa is somewhere they really do play – it’s a fun city which has been built for people to enjoy their lives, not just endure a 9-5 grind in damp, miserable weather before a hopefully early demise – but maybe that's just me in the UK.
My teenager Jesse and I hired a car when we flew in and our home for five nights was the very swish Current Hotel Autograph Collection, just 15 minutes from the airport. Many of the city’s hotels are Downtown, but we loved the swanky Rocky Drive area and the fact that we had a beautiful ocean view from our room and a small beach area for a sundowner.
Although the best cocktail is to be had was in the hotel’s fabulous rooftop restaurant Casa Cami, which also has breathtaking views over the city and coast all the way to St Petersburg, as well as knockout margaritas and Mexican cuisine – especially the rolled fried tacos, flautas. It got a bit windy up there the night we had dinner, and while we hardy Brits wore a light sweater, the locals were practically in their ski gear.
