Things to Do in Clearwater

Having seen an upswing in interest in one of the world’s oldest dance styles, Johanna and Karen started a belly-dancing collective in 2004 as a way to create a community for both professionals and students and an audience for monthly showcases. They gave these enthusiasts a brick-and-mortar hangout in 2008 when they opened their first center for classes and events, which has since blossomed and moved into a new space nearly four times the size of the old studio.

Today, Hip Expressions offers drop-in and ongoing classes led by seasoned instructors. Classes focus on introducing newcomers to the art form’s fundamental isolation techniques that keep hips and waists from arguing over the remote. In addition to belly dancing, classes include a variety of other dances and fitness crazes such as Zumba, yoga for dancers, or active isolated stretching.

After meeting at the Beachview Inn starting point and undergoing a training session that frowns upon Segway jousting, your tour group will segue on their Segways to the Ream Wilson trail and follow it to the Clearwater Memorial Causeway to spot a fantastic panorama of the Gulf of Mexico. Once you've snapped a few shots of people smiling, jumping, and balancing Segways on their noses, buzz down the corkscrew to Coachman Park before continuing to historic Harbor Oaks and the Clearwater Beach Walk. Along the way, there's a chance you'll spot manatees, dolphins, stingrays, and wild parrots. After two hours, you'll have covered seven miles worth of sunny landscapes and wildlife.

Judie Dazzio believes that everyone can be an artist. And at Dazzio Art Experience—a comprehensive art school—she helps everyone from children to adults and novices to professionals harness their creativity. Though she's a painter herself—having won awards for her work with watercolors and acrylics—she caters to range of artistic interests, offering classes in acrylics and watercolors but also branching out into sculpture, illustration, and Photoshop. For the experienced artist, she and her instructors provide developmental classes to help them produce portfolio pieces and host group critique sessions.

Beyond teaching her students the techniques to create, she also displays their works in a gallery attached to her school. Here, rows upon rows of painted canvases, sculptures, and handcrafted jewelry showcase their newly acquired talents.

Much like professional skydivers, wily coyotes, and other careers that involve a degree of danger, most professional glassblowers aren’t self-taught. Joshua Poll, however, learned to harness the glass furnace all by himself, today imparting more than a decade of self-taught experience to Zen Glass Studios, where he and fellow glass smith David Walker create custom works of art by hand. Together they shape glass into authentic and unique pieces, including custom glassware and jewelry to wear while meeting a spouse’s goldfish for the first time.

Within their studio, Joshua and David teach workshops and classes, during which students survey basic to advanced glass-blowing techniques, crafting their own handmade objects such as ornaments, beer glasses, and vases. The duo also runs a full glassblower training program, which follows a syllabus structured to arm all students with all the necessary skills to set out on their own in the industry, just as Joshua did all those years ago.

At Hot Yoga Largo, sweltering hot classrooms spark a rejuvenating release for muscles. Sweat and trapped toxins expel out of the body’s pores as instructors link static yoga poses into an up-tempo tapestry of movement. Students can also venture outside of the studio for energizing classes held on the beach, sliding through poses as the sun peeks its head over the water.

In 1962, Charles Redington commissioned a 1,200-foot-long fishing pier to be built in the Gulf, one of eight others like it in the area. Today, this long wooden walkway represents the last of its brethren, preserved and restored by the current owners, the Antonious family, who treasure its historic significance and excellent fishing. The waters surrounding the pier teem with sea life, such as flounder, eels, sharks, dolphins, and kingfish who burble "checkmate" when they get hooked. The crystalline Gulf waters provide a view of the vibrant reefs below, best seen and fished from the very end of the pier, which is reserved for those who purchase VIP passes. Since The Long Pier requires no fishing license, both amateur and professional fisherfolk can enjoy its sunny lengths and salty breezes by simply renting a rod and buying bait from the onsite tackle shop.