I chose St. Pete over Siesta Key, never having tried either one, and I would not come back to St. Pete. We've been to Indian Rocks and Indian Shores Beaches as well as Sanibel/Captiva, Caladesi and Ft. DeSoto ... love them all. We're staying at a Mom 'N Pop down the beach from the Don Cesar Resort. The motel is right on the beach, excellent location ... but at $160 night (nightly rate if staying a week!), I expected better furnishings and a cleaner place. What's shown on the Internet is not truthful ... the photographs and many of the reviews on tripadvisor.com.

But the biggest bummer is the beach ... so much seaweed washing up, and worse than that, the trash ... plastic bags, cups, etc. now and then! I guess it happens everywhere but I haven't seen it at the other Florida beaches like this. Also, almost NO shells ...

Oh, well, we'll chalk it up to experience, and stay elsewhere next time. We'll still have fun and make the best of it, going to other beaches and area. But I wouldn't come back ...

I wanted to ask ... has anyone else who's been to all/most of the beaches that I mentioned noticed more trash in the surf at St. Pete? I was really surprised ...

Too bad! Sorry this was no good..
We were in St Pete too long ago to have any good answers for you, except I considered it the worst place I had been in Florida
It seemed that a restaurant that came highly recommended would be the only good thing about our stay there, but I got food poisoning there lol

Sorry to hear this happened Elsiemoo. We head just south of St Pete to Longboat Key. It's adjacent to Sarasota and the beaches here (Anna Maria, Longboat, Lido and Siesta) are all really great beaches.

Years ago I went to Treasure Island and it was a beautifully wide beach and it had a lot of hotels and condos.

Maybe next year you'll come south again!!

Thanks for the sympathy, LN and Scarlett ... This is the first beach in Florida that has disappointed. The water is a bit clearer today but not the best. Oh, well, we'll just make lemonade ... worse things than driving to Ft. De Soto and Caladesi, and having wonderful days there!

We were on the North Carolina coast recently, and I was flabbergasted at the amount of trash coming in with the waves. A sorry state of affairs!

Don't know about that one, but I've been to Indian Rocks, Indian Shores, Treasure Island and Siesta Key beaches recently and they were all clean. Love them all. Thanks for the warning on St.Pete.

We were there in March 2007. I couldn't describe it more differently, and I don't know what could have happened? Here are some photos from our trip that show how nice the beach and water were:

Flickr Link: http://tinyurl.com/4vt2dt.

We did stay at Tradewinds Resort, and I saw that the workers took care of the beach, but that doesn't explain the water. No seaweed to speak of either.

We originally had plans/reservations to stay farther south, but I read that they were experiencing red algae, so at the last minute, I switched to St. Pete Beach. We even paid a cancellation fee to do it, but I believe it was worth it.

Sorry about your trip.

Sorry your experience wasn't as nice as mine which goes to show IMO that it isn't ALWAYS that way.

Elsiemoo, it's been a while since I've been to St. Pete, but I wouldn't go back either. Overall the whole area just seemed so tired and run down. We drove over from Orlando and were so depressed to see highway signs advertising XXX shops. Quite a comedown after the family resort ambience of Disney.

Even worse - the house we rented was a dirty shack (looked great on the Internet, was literally faling apart and reeking of mildew). We walked out to the beach and there were partiers camping out, empty liquor bottles and cigarette butts everywhere. We left immediately and moved down to Pass a Grille, which was acceptable, but hardly paradise.

You have my sympathy.

Sorry elsiemoo. We've happily stayed at Treasure Island, Indian Rocks and Indian Shores and just driven thru St Pete on our way to Ft. DeSoto. Please share the name of the hotel where you're staying. I hope you do make lemonaid!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but most of you have not spent more than a vacation at any given ocean beach, right?

One of the reasons I love the ocean is that it's so changeable, from day to day, week to week, season to season, year to year. It depends on wind patterns, currents, and tides as well as human behavior in the case of trash -- and a good storm can change things forever.... until the next big storm.

The presence of seaweed and shells -- and even trash -- can depend on wind and sometimes what's happening off-shore both on and under the water.

You have several days or even a week or so of a lot of "spinach" in the surf and then, suddenly, there'll be a change in weather out over the open water and the water will be clear as crystal. The "spinach" may have been from undersea "gardens" that were torn up by a large storm out in the Gulf or just scraped from nearby marshes and collected along the shore by a cross-shore wind.

You can have several weeks of beautiful clear beach and then, overnight, it'll be junked up with red tide and/or dead fish. Heavy surf can churn up ocean-bed sea animals and all the shells will collect along the shallows of a long, gradual beach.

The presence of trash, of course, is because of human misbehavior -- some of it from piggy people on the beach, some from piggy people out on boats and ships, some from piggy waste management misdeeds. Whether the trash stays put on the sand depends on municipalities and weather; whether it stays in the surfwater is up to the ocean gods.

So, elsiemoo (and others), your experience with the motel would probably be the same if you went back, but that beach could be very different, especially if you went at a different time of the year or after a large storm.

Sorry if that turned out to be a lecture on something you already knew, but I've been to St. Pete beach at a time when there wasn't any seaweed, and last month I spent 3 weeks in Sarasota and got three walks on the beach in between stints with my hospitalized mother. The first two times, the water (on Lido) was full of seaweed right along the shore and I couldn't walk in the surf without getting tangled. The third time, there wasn't a trace of seaweed.

Thanks Cassandra. Your post was interesting and informative, not preachy at all.