A visit to France draws a local writer to a little French restaurant in Tierra Verde

Writer Tyler Gillespie's study trip to Strasbourg, France, through USF St. Petersburg, led him to learn of a little French restaurant right back here in our own neighborhood. He wrote about his adventure in an article in Creative Loafing. It's about David Weiss and Jean Sebastien, who opened Cordon Bleu about a year ago. It's run the traditional French way: They're open in the morning, then close from 2 p.m to 5 p.m. They reopen at 5 for dinner. If you like dining out, this might be for you.

At Fort Desoto Park and over at Egmont Key, you can have a really great adventure

It's always great to see our favorite places getting their due in the news. Recent case in point: Cathy Salustri's feature in Creative Loafing about 10 things you can do at Fort DeSoto Park. Cathy, as we've seen in the past with her history courses for Eckerd's OLLI program, clearly loves Florida. Most of the pictures accompanying the article are Cathy's, so she spent some time researching the article. (Nice work, Cathy!) She ends with the sunset (the picture above) but there nine other items, including looking for horseshoe crabs and starfish. There's even a trip over to Egmont Key. You're in for an adventure. 

If you love Florida history, you really ought to meet author/instructor Cathy Salustri

Did you see the write-up about Cathy Salustri in The Gabber? If you're at all curious about Florida history you'd do well to get to know Cathy. She teaches some of the history sessions in the Eckerd College Osher Lifelong Institute. She's also the author of Backroads of Paradise, a fascinating volume in which she takes a modern-day tour of some of the places detailed in The WPA Guide to Florida. Scholars of the state's history know that the Works Progress Administration's Federal Writers Project kept writers such as Zora Neale Hurston, Stetson Kennedy, and Carita Doggett Corse employed during the Depression. Cathy is the arts and entertainment editor at Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. She used to write for The Gabber and once worked at the Florida Studies program at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. Cathy is working on a new book about small towns in Florida. She lives in Gulfport, one of the small towns she's likely to write about.