Of the many places we have traveled, I find the restaurant reviews on Sanibel and Captiva to be probably the worst batch of reviews. Some are utterly ridiculous (there was a mosquito in the restaurant!), and Sanibel and Captiva attract a really wide range of guests so it is hard to guage–for lack of a better word–what their experience with food is (and what their expectations are). You aren’t going to find fancy tapas with foam here, but you can find a great meal.  So here are our favorites, what we go there for, and why we like them. These are the old standbys when we visit each year…

1. Island Pizza
Are you looking for good, un-frilly pizza that isn’t a chain? Island Pizza (Sanibel) is a great option for dinner. I actually like their pizza more than any pizza I get in DC, mainly because it reminds me of Tony’s in Wyoming which is what I grew up on. While we usually order pizza, we ordered calzones this year and they were quite delicious, large, and contained plenty of toppings. They deliver on Sanibel too, which is a bonus if you are feeling too lazy–I mean too much in vacation mode–to go pick it up. Plus, this way we can watch the ocean from our balcony while eating. Menu is here. I’d estimate between $10-$20 per person, depending on whether you eat 1 slice or 6…

2. Doc Ford’s
Also good for dinner, with multiple locations (see their website) you can head to Doc Ford’s whether you are on Sanibel or Captiva. They have some cool saltwater fish tanks which captivate children (and adults) as well as lots of seating.  In addition to lots of menu options ranging from seafood, to tex mex, to steak, they also have one of the better selections of local craft beer on draft anywhere on the two islands. We’ve tried lots of things here, and the only disappointment we had was the oysters. They were fine, but not as good as elsewhere. Two thumbs up for shrimp flatbread, fish, tacos, and DH approved of their ribeye as well. Cost is between $25-$40 per person, depending on how many courses and how much alcohol.

3. Mucky Duck
We haven’t eaten dinner here in probably 15 years, but frequent the Mucky Duck for lunch and beer by the beach. With a prime location, the Mucky Duck on Captiva can get crazy busy, so heading there earlish or later (kitchen closes at 3) is a wise idea. They have a great selection of beer, including the Mucky Duck Red Ale, as well as delicious beach-bar food for lunch. DH goes for the clam strips, I’m a fan of the duck duck shrimp, that are a bit spicy but utterly delicious. Good clam chowder as well. Click here for their website; lunch is between $15-$20 with one beer.

4. Bubble Room
Again, we have been here for dinner, and while I haven’t had a bad meal, it’s not our favorite place to eat. What it is our favorite for is…CAKE. The Bubble Room on Captiva has famous desserts. While there are many options, our standby selections are the chocolate torte, the cheesecake, and the red velvet. We like the Bubble Room so much we opted for their cakes for our wedding desert, which was a universal success. The slices are HUGE, and they will serve you usually anytime after 11am. We did have someone refuse us cake at 4:45pm this year, which was bizarre, and we had to wait until 5pm. It was worth those 15 minutes. Nom nom nom. Cake is about $8 a slice: website. Yes, the website plays super annoying music.

5. Blue Coyote
Relatively new to us, the Blue Coyote is a great choice for either lunch or dinner on Sanibel. Our lunch was delicious, with some of the best fish tacos I’ve had and a burger I would order again in a second. The ceasar wrap was also a great option. We’ve only been here for lunch due to their slightly bizarre dinner schedule, but I would not hesitate to return. Plus, the coyote art is pretty fascinating. Trust me on that. Lunch is $15-$25 per person, depending on number of courses and entree, without drinks (menu).

6. The Lazy Flamingo
Whether you want a quick bucket of peel and eat shrimp or a larger meal, the Pink Flamingo is a great place to go for consistently decent food without fuss. There are two locations, one at either end of Sanibel. Seating at the Blind Pass location near Captiva is short and can be very hard to come by; but the beer is cheap (in either location)! They have the best oysters we have found on the island as well as conch fritters and conch chowder if that’s what you are looking for. Don’t expect frills, expect simple, properly prepared seafood. They do offer some chicken options as well (no experience there, sorry). You can find their menu here; meals are $10-$20 for large portions.

Other Options
In addition to these favorites, we have some other restaurants that have usually been pretty good, though we’ve had one or two misses with them and go there slightly less frequently, like The Timbers (great seafood market though), The Green Flash, and the Sunset Grill. There are a few places left we’ve never been, including the Madhatter (#1 on our priority list) and Il Cielo, which looks pretty tasty as well. While I won’t call out the restaurants we’ve been unhappy with by name, I’ll just say that we were not impressed with some places that were serving “fancy” or “complicated” food items; they were wildly overpriced and no where near the quality we get in DC.

The real problem? Always too many places to try, too much food to be had, and never enough time!

Word to the wise–the no see ums can be really awful in Sanibel, and particularly in the refuge as it is protected from the wind more than say, the beach. Take bug spray. I was literally running from the car to the overlooks back to the car as fast as I could; I still have the bites on my legs to prove it. 

There are a couple of ways you can enjoy Ding Darling–walking, biking, car, and in their tram. You can also canoe, kayak, or stand up paddle board in certain areas of the refuge.  Fishing is also allowed in specific locations. We decided to take the 5-ish mile drive in our car as we had already gone on a run and played at least an hour of tennis. The speed limit is slow and strictly enforced; everyone is courteous as you can stop anywhere along the road to hop out and look around, which is pretty neat. I think next time we would definitely try to bike. Much of Sanibel has beautiful biking paths, and drivers are typically very very conscientious. It would be a great way to spend the morning by biking around the refuge.

Entrance to the park is $5 per car, $1 bike, or $1 for pedestrians, cash only. One of the trails also has a $1 entrance fee; the visitor center is free. The wildlife drive is open every day, except for Fridays, and is also open on all holidays. For updated hours, you can see their schedule here.

Gators are pretty common in the refuge, but we didn’t encounter any the day we went. I think they are more commonly seen in the morning, when they are basking in the sun to warm up for the day. But we did see a ton of birds, as well as some crabs and a cute little mangrove snake (nope, not poisonous). Fish are constantly jumping way, way out of the water. And there were so many birds, including the snowy egret, roseate spoonbill (the only naturally pink bird), as well as tons and tons of brown pelicans and cormorants. I had never seen the roseate spoonbills before–they are pretty cool birds, both in color and in beak. I wish we had a super duper very long zoom lens to catch one of them up close!

We were playing with DH’s brand new DSLR, the Canon Rebel EOS T5i. After the Galapagos, he was really interested in getting a better camera and splurged on a great Amazon deal. Yep, he had to go get a shmancy fancy camera that was better than mine! And then we had fun arguing over who took which photos, per usual, including some of those below.

In any case, if you are visiting Sanibel or Captiva Islands, or even southwest Florida, I would absolutely suggest going into the refuge.

If you are interested in birds, pick up a quick bird guide before you go. There are great waterproof versions with just Sanibel and Captiva birds.

Brown Pelican

Mostly Dunlin, with a Sandpiper, Red Knot and maybe a Cormorant in the back

Roseate Spoonbill

Tricolored Heron

Snowy Egret

Mangrove Watersnake

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.

The Mucky Duck is Always a Lunch Stop

I’ve realized that I’m a bad relaxer. I’m constantly wanting to check things off my to-do list, or talk about what else needs to be accomplished. I hate having a list of “undone” items while relaxing. In contrast, DH can have all the things in the world to accomplish and still decide to take a whole day to do nothing. Yup, nothing. This drives me crazy for two reasons–first, because he could be helping with my to-do list (like house cleaning). Second and probably more importantly, because no matter how hard I try, I really can’t seem to do the same.

Last year, before I started blogging, we got married on Sanibel Island in Florida. You can read all the reasons I love Sanibel and Captiva. So of course we went back for our first anniversary. The familiar means that we don’t ever feel like we have to get out and “see everything”, and I can relax.

So here are 5 of our favorite things to do on a weekend trip to Sanibel and Captiva.

1. Walk the beach and hunt for shells.
So many shells! Sanibel and Captiva are both known for their excellent shelling. If you are an early riser, you might be able to find wonderful sand dollars or large conch shells. There are also the most adorable mini shells I’ve ever seen.

2. Run on the paths lining the island.
One of the best things about Sanibel is the paths that line the island. We like to/feel the need to (see point #3) to go for runs. It’s a great way to see the island while getting some exercise. If you are a biker, you can easily rent a bike from your hotel/condo or one of many stores in town.

Bubble Room Chocolate Torte & Cheesecake…Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner

My New Raybans Are Awesome Enough to Give DH a Special Ray of Light

Can’t Get Enough of the Mucky Duck’s View & Adorable Angry/Cute Duck

View from the Mucky Duck!

Shells, Shells, Everywhere

3. Eat cake from the Bubble Room.
The Bubble Room is a super-quirky year round Christmas decorated restaurant, that is best known–well deservedly–for it’s cake. Our favorites are the cheesecake, red velvet, and chocolate layer. Get it to-go: one piece is 2 breakfasts and dessert. I’m not kidding, these things are huge, and delicious.

4. Drink beer and watch the waves from the Mucky Duck.Mucky Duck is a Captiva favorite, though we prefer to sit outside, grab some bar-chow, and have a draft. They have a great selection of beers on tap, including a namesake red ale that is delicious. Beware–during high season, it will be packed. But in the off season? It’s fantastic.

5. Play a game of tennis.
Many accommodations on Sanibel offer tennis courts, something we take advantage of when we visit. But we’re not that good, so there isn’t much left to explain about this. Except that I beat DH in a few sets. 

Have you been to Sanibel or Captiva? What did you like the most? 

I’m from Wyoming and wasn’t really wild about getting married there. I love the outdoors, but I’m not outdoorsy (no wildflowers in my hair, thanks).  I love horses, but I don’t ride consistently anymore (traded one hobby for another, remember?).  A preppy wedding in Wyoming in a log cabin just seemed downright weird.  And while I love to ski, I wasn’t really into the winter/cold/snow wedding thing. DH is from upstate New York, and that just wasn’t really high on either of our wish lists. We talked about Ithaca, where we met, but the enthusiasm just wasn’t there. We both wholeheartedly agreed that we wanted to get married on the beach which meant we had to travel. And we wanted a laid-back wedding. Not totally casual, but relaxed. We wanted to get married at one of those places we really enjoy visiting, not because it’s new and novel, but because we genuinely like it.  At a place that has sentimental value, even if its not “home”.  And at a destination that we immediately both agreed on upon first mention.

For us, that was Sanibel Island.

I first started going to Sanibel Island when I was very little with my grandmother. Over the years, I’ve been back to the island numerous times.  And in the past 10 years, I think I’ve probably gone to Sanibel more than I’ve gone home to Wyoming. It’s a place where we know our way around (though it’s hard to get lost on a small island). It was also the first place that Jeff and I went on a trip together.

And so our wedding became a “sort-of” destination wedding.  Sure, it was a destination for some of our guests, but to us it was comfortable and familiar.Of course we’d never planned an event on Sanibel, so getting vendors together was much more like a true destination wedding: time consuming and sometimes frustrating.  But when we arrived, we knew where we wanted to eat, what we wanted to do, and were excited to share “our place” with friends and family who had never been before. With a sort-of destination wedding, you also avoid the annoyances of “home”…like running into people you don’t really want to see.

The wedding went off without a hitch, and it was the perfect place for us. Sure, a lot of our invitees couldn’t make it, but I’m not sure if some of them would have come if it was 200 miles away instead of 1000.  And that’s a-okay…part of the wedding experience, right? Sanibel Island remains one of my favorite destinations, and we are headed back in December.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a home away from home, but it’s definitely different than going on “vacation” to somewhere new.  It’s somewhere we know, and somewhere we love. I can’t wait to get back to the Mucky Duck to have a beer outside while watching the waves (Captiva, I realize). Or run on the bike paths. Or go gawk at jewelry I can’t afford at The Cedar Chest. Or try to find the ever elusive unbroken shell. Or do absolutely nothing at all.

All photos in this post are copyright released copies from our wonderful wedding photographer, Nick Adams (www.nickadamsphotography.com).