I’m writing this from the screened in porch of Ocean’s Reach on Sanibel, where, of course, we got married back in 2013. Two years has flown by. I think every time I come here I wonder how much a condo costs to own and if I could work remotely for a month a year…
The View!
Mainly I’m catching up on sleep and spending actual time with DH, who often gets frenzied Heather who is either working, working out, or talking nonstop about working or working out. Yea, I took some more contract work again, and I’m a bit short on time. Thank goodness for free Wi-Fi on Jet Blue so I could at least get a little bit done on the way down here.
Though, after 11 hours of sleep last night, I’m like a whole new human. DH said this morning “You’re chipper like a 10. Could you tone it down to a 6? It’s 8:30.” He is not a morning person. And I am a Grinch when I don’t get my sleep.
Anyways…Sanibel continues to be one of our favorite places. Last year I listed five reasons I love coming here, so, this year I’m going to add five more!
1. Grab coffee and breakfast at Sanibel Bean. I really like their coffee (even though I’ve been mostly a tea drinker lately, I did have a lovely iced latte this morning). They also have fresh fruit smoothies and excellent breakfast sandwiches and burritos. They also had a stuffed flying ace snoopy which we narrowly avoided taking home, but that’s beside the point…
2. Go to the Sanibel Farmer’s Market on Sunday! The Sanibel Farmer’s Market is pretty awesome. Last year we had some great barbeque, this year we opted for lobster rolls (good, though Luke’s Lobster in DC is still better). But the produce looks fantastic, particularly the tomatoes this time of year. There are also a ton of vendors selling things like monstrous linzer cookies (narrowly escaped buying one of those), huge stuffed olives (nom nom), pickles, handmade pasta, and cheese. If we were staying for longer, I think some lobster ricotta ravioli with fresh tomatoes would’ve been on the dinner menu…
3. Gawk at the amazingly kitschy Christmas decorations at the Pink Flamingo. It’s surprising, for how much I hate kitschy things, that I find most of the kitsch on Sanibel endearing. Particularly the inflatable menagerie (it really is a menagerie) at the Pink Flamingo. I’ve never seen so many blow up Christmas items in one place. Usually there are some amazing Peanuts characters, which are really my favorite.
4. Look for cool animals. You never really know what you might see! We saw a super cool Pileated Woodpecker (huge, may I add) on a run one morning. And then, to our surprise, a lady fishing on the beach pulled in a little baby hammerhead, about a food and a half long. It fortunately unhooked itself, unharmed on the beach…though she did have to figure out how to get the angry little fella back into the ocean. Super cool. Lots of egrets and ibis, too. It’s just a great place to always be on the look out for something.
5. Try New Places to Eat. I always leave Sanibel feeling like a blow-up Snoopy…and thinking how I would have liked to eat at more places! We definitely have our favorites, but each year we try somewhere we haven’t been before. This year was Doc Fords, which is a Sanibel standby (they also have a location on Captiva). While not original, they had some of the best wings I’ve had pretty much ever…and the conch chowder DH had was pretty tasty, too.
