Adventures in sunny Sarasota

I got into Sarasota early Friday morning back in January. I had friends from Miami come up to meet me at the airport. It was amazing to reunite with old friends (also from up north) in a beautiful, new place. I should mention it was my birthday weekend and the sunny escape from unpleasant Pennsylvania was desperately needed.

My friends checked into the Tropical Shores Beach Resort with me. We immediately stocked up the roomy kitchen with bagels and juice for breakfast from the nearby Crescent Market, which is a little beachy supermarket in the heart of Siesta Village. Siesta Village is basically a long strip of cute touristy shops, great little restaurants and bars, ice cream places, and more. It's a popular hangout for people heading to or from the beach.

And speaking of art, the food we ordered resembled some sculptures as well.

Since we were staying on the beach and we had limited time in this gorgeous place I already never wanted to leave, our first stop was the beach. I suppose I should mention it gets cold in Florida, too, but even in January Sarasota has 75 degree days. To be perfectly honest, in comparison to the negative 20 degree wind chill I was still reeling from, the January temperature down South felt like 120.

We put on our swimsuits and took a walk down to the beach. The sunshine, the palm trees, and the cool breeze were incredible, but the sand...there are no words. Honestly. It was the whitest and softest thing I had ever witnessed! When you're a workaholic and your idea of a fun vacation is heading down to New Jersey for a quick dip in the brown polluted water and the only sealife you see consists of a crumpled can of Coke and you're used to digging your toes into coarse sand ridden with cigarettes, trust me, you're willing to settle for anything in Florida. But Sarasota is not like anything in Florida. It was like the Carribbean. Better even. The water was a shade of turquoise mixed with royal blue. Though the water was as cold as the wind up north, it was still incredibly refreshing. The sand felt amazing as we sprawled out on it to dry off. We ended up joining a group of young teenagers in a game of beach volleyball and then took a walk down to Siesta Village.

We grabbed a bite at Daiquiri Deck, which is a really cool place. It's mostly outdoors and we sat out on the deck drinking an incredible combo of half strawberry daiquiri and half pina coloda, which washed down the spicy buffalo grouper wrap quite nicely.

We headed back to the resort to change and see what we could find in terms of going out in Sarasota. I assumed there wasn't much to do in a quaint beachy town like this, but boy, was I wrong. I didn't even know downtown Sarasota existed, yet how incredible it was.

We took a drive downtown, which is no more than 20 minutes away from Siesta with traffic. We spent some time driving around Main St. and the other roads in town just gawking at the beautiful sprawling condos and hotels like the Ritz-Carlton. We began the restaurant hunt shortly after and, trust me, this was no easy task. We couldn't decide on what type of food we even wanted because there were so many choices! A little Vietnamese restaurant, a big tropical Thai restaurant, an abundance of Japanese and sushi places, authentic Italian, Peruvian, Spanish, tapas, the works...it was all there! We decided to check out a place called Selva Grill because it was packed-we were intrigued! I loved the view just walking into the restaurant. On one side, the rest of Main Street. Behind us, the most gorgeous condo I've ever seen. To the left, the beautiful Marina with all its big boats. Down the side street, an abundance of art galleries. And speaking of art, the food we ordered resembled some sculptures, as well. The ceviche was really good and the drinks were just what I needed to celebrate getting older. At least I was starting a new year of my life someplace so beautiful!

After dinner, we took a walk over to the Marina to drool over the sailboats and then back around the condos to strongly consider moving down and buying one (more on that later).

We stopped outside of a rather crowded and quaint bookstore to ask some locals about fun spots to go. We were shocked with how many options they gave us! We could head a few doors down and upstairs to O'Malleys, a bar, or down to the Gator Club, a bar and hangout, or over to Mattison's City Grille, a lively restaurants with good, live music and a ton of dancing people. If we waited a little while and stopped by Two Senioritas, Cru, or one of the other incredible restaurants nearby from dessert, we could head over to Esca or Horse Feathers further down Main St. closer to midnight for drinks, dancing and people-watching, which we were all about. And we did just that. I had so much fun! I couldn't believe how much was going on in this town.

I didn't get much sleep that night, which was unusual because 1. I was on vacation and 2. the beds were quite comfortable. The problem was that I couldn't stop thinking about how much I wanted to move here.

I finally got some rest and when we woke up, we pigged out on the food we got the day before. For some reason, we were still hungry, so we headed over to a cute breakfast place in the Village called the Broken Egg for a huge meal. We obviously wanted to go to the beach again, but we heard about a spot called Lido Beach that was close to downtown, so we packed up the car and headed back that way. Before we made it to the beach, we ran into a huge area called St. Armand's Circle. This is a classy and fun outdoor shopping area with amazing stores and great restaurants. You have your pick of sundresses at Lilly Pultizer, $75,000 sculptures, cute little shoes from a store called Addison Craig, a facial from the Met, or the delicious and world-famous 1905 salad from Columbia, a legendary Spanish restaurant that has been in Tampa since, well, 1905, and has been in Sarasota for quite some time, as well.

Needless to say, we ate at Columbia and I bought one too many pairs of shoes. We tossed our purchases in the car and headed down to Lido Beach. Lido was much different from Siesta-the sand wasn't as soft, but there were many special things about it. For one, it was much less crowded-very peaceful there. There were really original looking condos overlooking the beach, yet it was modest. The breeze blowing the palms was incredible; the water just as beautiful. We were starting to get jealous of the adorable families having picnics nearby. We got some sun and took a relaxing walk.

Afterwards, we decided to drive around and see more of Sarasota. We stopped by Marie Selby Botanical Gardens for a look around. It was beautiful. Afterwards, we grabbed a cup of coffee at this really cool place called Metro Coffee and Wine. It was small and modern and the people were so friendly. They have bands play there every Friday and Saturday, too!

We gawked at some more homes from small and artsy to massively huge and overwhelming, all of which were beyond amazing.

When we got back to the hotel, we changed and decided we were going to go something in a totally different area of town. We headed to nearby Gulf Gate, which is a residential area not even 5 minutes from Siesta. We got some incredible Thai food at Thailand and then we bought some rich chocolate from a shop called Chocolate, Nuts and More. AMAZING. They even had chocolate covered popcorn! We took a drive down the side streets and noticed a ton of bars, so we decided to do a bit of bar hopping and then took a long walk around the neighborhood. I felt right at home as everyone walking their dogs greeted us.

We went back to Siesta Key and saw things were getting crazy in the Village, so we popped into Siesta Key Oyster Bar to jam out to some live music and have a beer. So many people came up to talk to us and made us feel welcome.

After a night of fun, laughter, drinks, and celebrating we went back to the hotel. We stayed up late munching on our chocolate and watching movies on cable as we discussed moving to Sarasota. Seriously. At first, we were goofing around-"How great would it be to actually live here?!". but then we really got serious.

The following morning, we went shopping at Sarasota Square Mall and decided to grab some brunch at First Watch nearby. Delicious, by the way. We got to talking about actually making the move. As a side note, I should mention that my friends were not living in Miami but were visiting their mother down there-they're from the northeast, as well. We started brainstorming-what would we do for jobs, where would we live, etc. Needless to say, when I got back up north, I started doing some research. It looked promising. My friends returned the following week and we started the planning process one cold night at Starbucks. Needless to say, the three of us are making the move this summer. We can hardly wait! Stay tuned to my blog for updates on the move and life in Sarasota!