About a mile south of our neighborhood is The Sponge Docks of Tarpon Srings. The Docks is where natural sponges have been harvested (most heavily by Greek sponge divers) for over 100 years and in addition to the sponge industry the Sponge Docks sport restaurants, shops, specialty food stops and more. If you feel so inclined, you can read until your hearts content here.
Heritage aside, to me, this is a quirky place! It ranges from bizarre to charming, from ramshackle to comfortable and from Greek to ... well, Greek. Yeah, there's not much of a cultural range here aside from a hint of Cuba that you get from the various cigar shops and rolling tables and a touch of Americana that comes from a few shops and eateries at the western end of the Docks. Otherwise you're in for a Greek time!
Caniece took to this place immediately but at first I was hesitant. That said, the ambiance and feel of The Docks has definitely grown on me and now I'm more then happy to kill an afternoon meandering up and down Dodecanese Blvd (did I mention that this place is REALLY GREEK ... it's probably Tim Ritchey's idea of heaven ... more baklava then you could ever hope to eat lol).
I guess we've all been to a million malls and they're all pretty much the same ... I think it's safe to say that The Sponge Docks is a pretty unique place and I'm glad to have it so close by; good smelling food, rude servers, kitschy shops, old fishing boats and all.
In the future we might review some of the shops and restaurants on The Docks but for now we're just going to cover the general bases.
And since people only ever really read blogs for pics ...
We'll kick things off with an amoebicly shaped sponge diver sign made of plywood.
The rest of these are just shots of the dock in no specific order and from no specific direction. :)
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