Florida Beaches

Here's a review of Florida beaches and by the bye a comparison of east coast (Atlantic) beaches and west coast (Gulf Coast) beaches. So first up, and the first stop on our road trip, is Siesta Key. I just love the color of the water there: emerald! I'm not sure why it's so bright, but I think it's just stunning. Maybe it's the contrast against the white sand or maybe because it isn't very deep very quickly. Do you see me in the distance in the pic? I'm standing on a sandbar out there. So at this particular stretch of the beach, it's shallow, then slightly deeper, then it gets shallow again before it drops in depth once again. I think these shallows make for nice waves. However, I don't want to say exactly where this beach is because at this public beach entrance there were hardly any people. Meanwhile, a short walk down the beach Corey and Mindy tell me that there was a bunch of people packed tightly together. I didn't go for the beach walk as I was happy where I was. One of my favorite "local" beaches.

Above are two views of South Beach, Miami. The playground of the beautiful and (filthy) rich! I'm not sure any of us are either, but we managed to sneak in anyway. Not only that, but we got superb room upgrades at the Ritz-Carlton. When I booked our rooms I just recall clicking on the Deluxe Room selection. Upon arrival we learned we got free upgrades to the Lanai Oceanfront Suite. This upgrade was worth about $1,200 as the latter is worth about $1,500 a night! I'm not sure how we lucked out but we scored big this time. Probably a once-in-a-lifetime thing... Of course everything was very pricey here. None of the lounge chairs, umbrellas, nor drinks on the beach are free. In fact, as I recall, three drinks cost us about $40. Meanwhile, the beach, while nice (good entrance, nice sand), was not all that much better than Siesta Key. The water was colder, and the beach more crowded as you can see. Off the beach, Miami has a wide selection of excellent restaurants, clubs, etc. We only went to a couple of restaurants, one Italian one Cuban, both were very good. On this point Miami certainly has more to offer. But of course at cost.

Finally, further up north from South Beach is Cocoa Beach. One of many similar beaches on Florida's Atlantic coast, not too far away from Daytona. We happened to get there in the late afternoon, just in time to see this offshore storm. The beach looked ok, but the water was noticeably colder. We never really had time to go in as we left the next morning, but I've been to Daytona before. Meanwhile, my choice of hotel here, the Courtyard by Marriott Cocoa Beach was just subpar. The room was ok, but the hotel restaurant's food was probably the worst I've ever been served. Corey's Caesar salad was swimming in the dressing. The penne and meatballs was similarly oily. I had the chicken wings. Deep, deep, deep fried. Dreadful. So on that note, we decided to pack it up the next morning and hit the road at 06:00.

Oh, why no pictures of the beach at Key West? Because simply put we've not found a good beach there. There may be one, but we haven't really bothered looking. Key West is like a sunnier, warmer New Orleans. In fact Duval Street is somewhat similar in spirit to Bourbon Street. So even though I saw families with kids there, in my mind, Key West is more adult-oriented. Lots of fun bars, decent restaurants, but no beach.