Welcome to Clearwater Beach, Florida

When I first discovered Clearwater Beach, I thought it was a magical place that had drawn me to it and I immediately sought to purchase a home on the island. I had decided following an AHEPA convention to take a leisurely bus tour from Miami to Clearwater, Florida. It was not by chance but from an advertisement I had read in a Greek Orthodox newsletter about a place called Clearwater Beach in Florida. I fell in love with the island at first site.

Who wouldn't love an island surrounded by white sands and sporting quiet streets of small town America. There were no hotels of any significanse and the biggest restaurant on the beach was found on a quaint road called Mandalay. On Mandalay one could also find a clothing store, a pharmacy and a Greek grocery store.

The island is divided in two parts, the north beach and the south beach. I wanted to be in the south beach because the homes, that's right homes, were like the ones I had grown up with in Ohio.

Times have changed since the late seventies when I fell in love with Clearwater Beach. Now, there are huge hotels and skyscraper condominiums. Now, the neighboring once quiet park of Sand Key is jammed with condo's and pavement and sports a high rise bridge.

Now, the bridge onto the island is no longer the comforting draw bridge that gave us dwellers on the island security, but a sprawling high rise twist and turn bridge that gives room underneath for sporting, high masted, boats.

Those boats were the cause of the new bridge. I am still in mourning for the old.

But for those of you who have never seen Clearwater Beach off of Clearwater, Florida, you will not be hindered by memories of the old and you will fall in love with the new Clearwater Beach.

The island itself chooses whom it will keep and it seems to me that it has been greedy since she has kept just about everyone who has ventured to her call.

What a remarkable place and also since it is that exceptional it has garnered the interests of Scientologists who have purchased most of the properties on Clearwater, and have made some encroachments onto the island which probably accounts for the raging building that I find not at all appropriate to an island susceptible to hurricanes.

The Gulf of Mexico is enticing and, of course, remarkable for its sandstorms and high waters, also known as hurricanes. Water spouts are not an unknown phenomenon also on the island. Of course, I would love to see the island revert back to the early eighties when I frolicked all by self for miles on the most glistening, perfect beach in the world. And, I have been to beaches all over the world. None, in my mind compares to Clearwater.