Frolicking Around Florida

Last month, I had the opportunity to go up and down the state of Florida. I grew up going to Florida on family trips, but this time I went to visit a friend who works in Florida.  My trip was centered around Citrus County, in the northern part of the state.

Geraldine Brooks' historical fiction books are some of my favorite beach reads.

Citrus County is home to its own local little beach called Fort Island Trail.  The whole county is definitely more of a local environment than a lot of tourists.

Not quite the real Acropolis, but a good try!

Our first venture was to Tarpon Springs, known as the Greek center of Florida and the sea sponge capital of the world.  The city was founded my Greek immigrants, who recruited a large number of their countrymen to help harvest sea sponges.  And let me tell you, they take their sea sponges seriously here!  My friend went to purchase one and the lady working asked a variety of questions to ensure that she would make the best investment possible for her "eight-ten year sponge."  The sponges have natural antimicrobial properties so when she mentioned getting a string to hang it with, the worker warned, "Well, my only concern is that the string would not have the same antimicrobial properties as the sponge."  We also had traditional Greek food, complete with flaming cheese and yells of, "opa!"  We stopped at a Greek-speaking market, where I was excited to find Halloumi cheese.  One of the workers excitedly asked, "Are you Greek!?  You must be Greek if you know what Halloumi is!"  I had to explain, that no, I'm not Greek (though I do have some Balkan DNA!) I just got used to Halloumi as a vegetarian alternative when I lived in London.

Best orange juice in the world!

We vacationed at a lovely Airbnb right across the Sanibel Causeway.  Of course, no trip to the Fort Myers area is complete without a stop at Sun Harvest Citrus to stock up on juice for the holiday.  We also stopped at the Sunflower Cafe, one of my family's traditional restaurant stops, where we were the youngest patrons by about fifty years and got asked if we were sisters.  We were born just 18 days apart, but we're not related!

The world's most elaborate sleeve cuff.

Though the weather had been predicted to be in the 80s, it was actually really windy so that prevented us from going the whole way in the water.  It was still worth it to fight the wind and sit on the beach, even if my book ended up getting sand creased in every page!  Of course, no trip to Sanibel and Captiva is complete without a stop at the Sanibel Bean and the Bubble Room.

This dolphin mailbox was really excited for St. Patrick's Day.

We went over to the island two days in a row and visited most of the beaches.

No trip to Sanibel is complete without a stop at Pinocchio's for the best gelato outside of Italy.

There was a ton of traffic on the island. Sometimes it took us 45 minutes to get from one end to the other!  That gave us plenty of time to enjoy the palm trees and little shops. 

Captiva sunset

On our last day in that area, we went over to Fort Myers.  This was the beach that I spent my childhood visiting and it appeared that not much had changed.  We walked down the familiar pier and saw a dolphin swimming close to the surface and a few birds putting on a show for all the fisherman and tourists.  They got fed a lot of fish so their show seemed to be pretty successful.

This bird had an audience of 20 people.

As we made the long drive back to Citrus County, we stopped at Redington Beach for the sunset.  There was hardly anyone else  on the beach and we saw probably the best sunset of the trip.  We also stopped in Tampa for dinner on the water.

Somehow we managed to capture this photo on the first try

Inverness, Florida was named after the Scottish town by a Scotsman wandering throughout Florida.  With the lakes, I can see the resemblance to the Scottish Highlands, but there are a lot more palm trees in the Florida one!  There is also a bit of Irish flair to this town so we celebrated St. Patrick's Day there.  They even lit up their fountain green, similar to how they light up the buildings in Dublin.

The town got in touch with its Scottish and Irish heritage

I flew out of Orlando on an early morning flight, so we decided to spent the afternoon and evening at Disney Springs and then stay the night at an Airbnb.  Sounds like a plan, right?  Right, except for when our Airbnb gets cancelled at 10 PM leaving us to scramble trying to find an affordable hotel.  We did eventually find one, albeit a slightly dodgy one, though they did well with their towel art!  We went the Rainforest Cafe's counterpart, T Rex, made to look like the age of the dinosaurs.  I sat by a hatchling woolly mammoth so I was quite pleased.  We also enjoyed watching the aqua cars from a nearby dock.

The evening view at Disney Springs.

The weather was finally nice when I left Florida, but it was almost 20 degrees warmer in Colorado!