So…this is our last full day in Sarasota. We know, for sure, that we will be going to the beach in the morning. First, we plan on going to get some breakfast in Siesta Key Village again. There’s a restaurant called The Broken Egg. Apparently, Dick Vitale eats at The Broken Egg almost every day. He’s even known for frequently mentioning it on Mike and Mike in the Morning. If you remember our picture of Siesta Key Village at sunset, The Broken Egg is straight through the intersection, on the left (if you’re not Shawn Spencer and you can’t remember the pic, I posted it again, down below).

It sure did not disappoint. Justine got a massive oatmeal, whole wheat, and buttermilk pancake with strawberries and bananas. It was topped with the rest of her meal, cheesy potatoes, sausage and one egg.

I had Don’s Fiesta Skillet (potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, onions, salsa, and two eggs), along with fruit, and an english muffin.

We’re sad to say that we didn’t see Dick Vitale. Our only celebrity sighting is Vanilla Ice. And that is not even documented.

But…we have been seeing Amish and Mennonites around town frequently. Every time, we’re surprised to see these people in Florida. Well, we did some research for you. Interesting fact, if you google “Amish in” the second search that automatically comes up is “Amish in Florida.” Apparently, they like to spend their winter months in Florida. Sarasota is specifically mentioned as their destination of choice. There are five Amish restaurants in Sarasota, Der Dutchman, Dutch Haus, Dutch Oven, Sugar and Spice, and Yoder’s. Also, there is a Saturday morning Amish farmer’s market.

Ok. So back to the vacation. Today, we decided to stop and see Blake to ask about paddleboard rentals. As it turns out, there is too much wind to go paddleboarding. Too much wind…that’s the story of our vacation in Florida. So, we head out to the beach, instead. This time we didn’t go to Siesta beach, we drove further down the key to Turtle Beach. I’m really sorry, but we didn’t get any pictures. It’s hard to explain the difference, but the sand is a stark contrast to the sand in Siesta Beach. This sand is made dark and shelly. Also, the beach is a little steeper. And the beach is much more quiet since the spring breakers only go to the #1 beach in the US. The one similarity is that the water is still clear blue. Hey, I’ll trade the riff raff for darker sand any day.

Still, with half the day left and no chance to paddleboard, we had to do something interesting. Just north of us is Lido Key and Longboat Key. Blake recommended that we head over to St. Armarnd’s circle and the Mote Aquarium. We did just that.

The great thing about the Mote Aquarium is that it is also a major research center. We walked through seeing the normal fish, squid and jellies. But, we were able to see huge tanks of sharks, stingrays, dolphins, manatees and sea turtles where you can get pretty close.

Here’s Justine making friends with the stingrays.

We also got pretty close to the sea turtles! These girls, Shelly and Montego, are around 200 pounds.

And of course, Justine had to see the Manatees.

After the Mote Aquarium, we took a stroll around St. Armand’s circle. This place is packed with restaurants and shopping. Apparently, it was founded by a French pioneer, St. Amand (the misspelling of Amand, later stuck as Armand) and later purchased by John Ringling.

For our last night in Sarasota, we had dinner back on Siesta Key at The Cottage. This is a tapas resuarant that turned out to be the best choice of our trip on the Gulf Coast. The food was amazing. And…I’m willing to admit that we had the best crabcake outside of Maryland. In fact, it’s not a Maryland crabcake at all! It’s grilled, with pepperjack cheese, and some sweet sauce on top, with corn salsa. Wow!

After dinner and more frozen yogurt from SunniBunni, we had to get back to the hotel to get ready to go home on Friday. I had to break the news to Justine that we are driving home tomorrow. I guess she wasn’t ready for that. I had to leave and watch her have a little time to herself in the van. I couldn’t hear her very well, but it sounded like “I don’t want to go!!!”

The Ramada Sarasota is definitely an interesting hotel. We went to bed last night with jets flying right over us. Apparently, we’re pretty close to the Sarasota Airport.

This is our view right outside of our room. It is one of the few nice things that we’re holding onto at the Ramada.

Justine’s been to Siesta Key before and is pumped to show me around the town. But, she really is excited about showing me the beach.

We’re packed and ready to go to the beach. Our plan is to go get something to eat in Siesta Key Village first. We ordered breakfast at the Village Cafe. It is certainly an unassuming place. But, we enjoyed the service and the food very much. Justine had a feta, ham and spinach omelette and I had a breakfast burrito with grits.

Well, we scarfed down our food knowing that we were about to get to the #1 beach in the USA. Here’s our short little walk onto the beach.

We parked ourselves decently close to the water and hung out for a couple hours, only going into the water to cool off. The one exciting part was when I heard a photographer talking to the lifeguard. In the conversation, I heard someone say, “It’s a manatee or possibly two.” We got up and looked around and finally saw this huge manatee in the water bumbling up the shoreline.

After soaking up the sun, we headed back over to Siesta Key Village to get something to eat and add a post to the blog. We grabbed some sweet potato fries and hung out at Lelu’s Cafe. When we were done, we headed over to a surf shop behind the cafe called CalifFlorida.

We met a guy working there named Blake, who is from Downer’s Grove! Justine asked what brought him down to Siesta Key and his immediate response was “I hate the cold.” Well, that struck a chord with Justine and we kept talking with him for another twenty minutes.

After looking around the surf shop, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. We decided to go to the Lobster Pot in Siesta Key. I’ve heard from Judy, Megan, Vanessa and especially Justine, how good their crab cakes taste. Some have ventured to say, “the best crab cakes ever.” Look. I believe that crab cakes can be good in other places like Florida or Maine. But, just like whoopie pies are best in Lancaster, PA or deep dish pizza is best in Chicago, IL, Maryland crab cakes will always be the best in Maryland! So…we ordered the crab cakes as an appetizer and the lobster bisque for dinner. It was all very good. A definite seafood recommendation from the Tolys.

Now, here comes the good part. After dinner, Justine had the great idea of playing miniature golf (putt-putt for you Marylanders). To get everyone up to speed, I have never beaten Justine in mini golf. It was our first date when she got three holes-in-one (I needed to beat her by two strokes on the 18th hole, when she lined up her shot and sank it on her first stroke!). We’ve played 5-6 times since then and I always walk away a loser, while she walks away with a big smile on her face and at least one hole-in-one on the scoresheet. So, it didn’t surprise me that she wanted to play again.

We drove over to a place near our hotel that looked really nice called Smuggler’s Cove. As we walked in, we found out that not only can we play putt-putt, but we can feed alligators and view a rare albino alligator!

The game was neck and neck for the first 7 holes. Then, once I took the lead, I never let go. It was a game of pure fundamentals, as I stuck to manageable shots (nothing crazy here, folks).

At the 18th hole, I managed to keep my composure and win the night.

We headed over the the gator pond and went “fishing.”

And…here’s the main attraction: Pearl the Albino Alligator. There are only 40 in captivity in the world and one of them is a a small mini golf course in Florida.

Monday March 6, 2012

We woke up on Monday morning after a great night’s sleep in the van. We were pumped to have all day in one spot. Parmers Resort offers continental breakfast, which consists of fruit, toast, donuts, blueberry muffins, english muffins, and cereal. After enjoying our small breakfast while looking out at the water, we hopped in the van and drove to Bahia Honda State Park. It’s not too far north of us and we hear that it has the best beaches in the Keys.

We had to pay $9.00 for two people to enter the park. We’re glad that we got there early because they have a limit to the number of people allowed in at the same time. Apparently, they are not afraid to make you turn around. As we entered, we hung a left to go to Sandspur Beach, known for it’s white sands and beautiful views. No disappointment here:

We walked up and down Sandspur Beach and we were amazed by the views. Along the way it seems that someone or something likes to decorate with shells.

We don’t know who it is. We’re torn between the natives or random people that walk the beach. It’s still up in the air.

After hanging out at the beach, we decided to spend the rest of the day in Key West. Part of this decision was influenced by the fact that we had unusually high winds and kayak and snorkeling trips were canceled everywhere.

We  found a free parking space along Virginia Street. It’s a little far from the hubbub around town, but it’s better than feeding the meter. Our first thought was to get lunch at a small, cheaper place. So, we stopped at this little yellow building on Duval Street called The Banana Cafe. It looked great. We also had a good feeling about it since we loved a similar small restaurant in Laguna Beach called The Orange Cafe. Well, we were seated and immediately started to regret our choice. Half of the menu was in french. Then we started to read all of the French signs on the wall. This is a french restaurant! Not only are we wary of anything French (well, at least Aaron is), we just don’t know french food. The service ended up being terribly slow (This is not an exaggeration. We sat down at 1:30 and left after 3:15) and the crepes were not that great.

The next part of our journey was the southernmost point in the US. A short walk and we were in line to get our picture next to a very large buoy.

We then walked all the way back across the island in search of more sights. We saw the historic lighthouse, the home of Ernest Hemingway, and Route 1’s Mile Zero.

Further down Key West, we finally found the spring breakers. If anyone wanted to the reason why the Founding Fathers wanted a 100% estate tax, just travel down here in the spring. These kids are that very reason. This is not the scene we were looking for and we quickly found our way back to the better part of town.

This is right about the time that we found an internet cafe to update our Sunday post on thejanadaexperience.com.

Then we went to dinner at The Black Fin. It was great and we highly recommend it. The atmosphere is nice and quiet, although it is right on Duval. They have a great outdoor area in the back, as well.

Then, it was back to the Key Lime Shop for some more pie before we headed to Little Torch Key.

Sorry for the late post!

Sunday March 4, 2012

We woke up in Orlando, FL ready for a 6 and 1/2 hour drive to Little Torch Key, FL. Our destination is a small place named Parmer’s Resort in the Lower Keys. The drive didn’t start out exactly as we planned. Aaron wanted to stop at a CVS to get some juice (he was feeling Vitamin-C deprived). Well, we ended up driving a little out of the way, stopping at a Walgreens, then getting on the Florida Turnpike…going north. We swear we got on the ramp going to Miami. So, there is a sign that’s wrong off of I-4 in Florida. To top it off, we wasted $2.50 in toll money.

Aside: If anyone was wondering about why we haven’t posted much about food, here’s the deal. We’ll start with our road trip snacks. We picked up some dried fruit at the Village Market on Geneva Road. So we had about two pounds of dried strawberries and a pound of tart cherries. We also stopped at Costco for about three bags of sweet potato chips. Then, we got a couple bags of dried pineapple from the Health Foods Market on Geneva Road. Finally, we packed about fifteen Larabars and Justine made a massive bag of trail mix, which consisted of almonds, blistered peanuts, cashews, and semi-sweet Ghiradelli chocolate chips.

We try to stop at Starbucks because we know that they have clean bathrooms and good snack packs. Also, they tend to be near gas stations where we can kill two birds with one stone.

Back to the Florida Turnpike, it was a non-eventful drive. We saw a ton of farms and were excited to see the grass-fed cows in the pastures. It’s also a cultural shock for us to see service plazas in the middle of the tollway. We did see a cool car being towed.

The only really exciting thing was that we stopped at a Starbucks at the end of the tollway (this is just before you get on Route 1 for the Keys). We were getting ready to leave when Justine spotted Vanilla Ice. She thinks it was his look-a-like, his doppleganger, if you will. But, Aaron was pretty sure it was him. He’s seen Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II enough to know when he sees Vanilla Ice.

We then left to go south on Route 1 and see the Keys. We couldn’t believe the views and the color of the water. This drive was definitely the best so far for sightseeing.

We ended up on Little Torch Key at our hotel. It’s a very nice place to stay. It’s not a Marriott or the Hyatt. But, it’s quaint and quiet, right on the water. We think the character fits us very well.

We unpacked and decided to drive to Key West, about thirty minutes south. It took us a while to find a parking spot and we ended up putting all of our change in the meter. To quote a local, “those meters are highway robbery.” A Quarter = Ten minutes, a dime = 4 minutes, and a nickel = 2 minutes.

A short walk and we were downtown, walking through little shops. We found some Key Lime Pie, then headed to a restaurant for dinner (that’s a normal order for us, dessert, dinner). We went to Blue Heaven, which was recommended by Justine’s co-worker, Susan. We loved it! Great atmosphere and very good food.

After walking around some more, we picked up some more slices of Key Lime Pie. Yes, that’s how we roll..dessert, then dinner, then more dessert. It’s not every day that we can have authentic Key Lime Pie in Key West.

After getting back to the hotel, we decided that we didn’t want to sleep in our two twin beds with extra springy mattresses. Instead, we spent the night in the van on our memory foam topper. This really enhanced the “road trip experience.”

Well, we woke up in lovely Bowling Green, Kentucky this morning ready to drive to Orlando. We packed our bags and checked out of the hotel. On our way to place our bags in the van, we realized that in the middle of the night, we had parked the van under a tree. This must have upset some of the birds because our windshield was plastered with white spots, which are kind of hard to see in this photo.

In contrast to our first leg of the trip, our drive started out sunny and clear.

We were surprised to see how green Kentucky is right now. The landscape was beautiful, especially the farms. So, through Kentucky and Tennessee we listened to a lot of music. We’d say the between Aaron and Justine, the music collection is pretty diverse. It ranged from Sting (If I ever lose my faith…) to Coolio (Gangsta’s Paradise) to Fergie (Glamorous).

We then decided that if we want to make this a real road trip, we need to stop at some of the random places that are advertised on the freeway. We stopped at a Starbucks and saw a perfect little place to get our feet wet. It was the Arrowheads Aerospace Museum, right next to the Starbucks.

We walked on over and stepped inside. We were first greeted by an old bank teller window and a binder with loose-leaf paper. This was the sign-in sheet. Then this older woman yells from down the hall “Hello! Please sign in. You are now in the Museum’s gift shop. The actual exhibits are down the hall and will cost six dollars.” Well, before she even finished, we had already decided that we wouldn’t be here long. The “gift shop” was more like a consignment store. We’re serious about that, folks. This old woman was selling old, cheap, used stuff and telling us it was about the history of trains, planes and automobiles. The other part that turned us off was that this woman was sitting on a chair eating McDonald’s with her little Pomeranian dog eating her scraps. The whole place smelled like a McDonald’s hamburger. The smell of McD’s and the presence of that little, tiny, weird furball of a dog was not a good combo for us. We quickly looked around (since we’re nice people), said thank you and walked out the door.

We were back on the road and still determined to see sights if they turned up. Luckily, we knew that a particular sight was coming. Justine’s many trips to St. Simons Island has brought her through Chattanooga so many times that she knows each and every sign for Ruby Falls almost personally. We decided to make the stop. It didn’t hurt that a billboard said that it was on National Geographic’s 101 places to see in the U.S. So, stop we did.

We’ve always thought that Ruby Falls was a waterfall in Chattanooga on Lookout Mountain. Nothing crazy. I mean we’ve been to Yosemite, so what’s another waterfall to us, right (Justine has also seen gorgeous falls in Africa)? We drive up and find that we have to enter this stone building to see the falls. Thoroughly confused, we enter the building only to find out that we would have to take an hour and a half tour through caves to see Ruby Falls. These falls were inside a cave. That threw us off completely. Couple our surprise with a price tag of 33.50 each, we walked out after looking at the post cards. We drove to the top of Lookout Mountain and saw beautiful homes and some historic monuments. That was good enough for us. We then got back on the freeway for Florida.

We decided to finish the book on tape that we started the day before. It was Marley and Me. For a six hour reading, it seemed like the greatest idea for the first 5 hours. The last hour was terrible. Aaron was the first to grab the kleenex. Justine was trying to keep her composure since she was driving.

When Marley and Me ended, we were past Atlanta and on our longest stretch of road, yet. We went back to our music, then we started a new book on tape, Beach Road, a mystery thriller set in Long Island, NY.

We made it to Orlando and are greatly anticipating see the Florida Keys for the first time in our lives!!

Nothing was going to keep us from Florida

We left Chicago with severe weather warnings all over the place. Seriously…all over the place. They were coming from the news, the radio and our family. Luckily, when we checked the radar it seemed that we would be missing it. Right outside of Chicago, it immediately cleared up. But, we still had some huge gusts of winds. We made it to Bowling Green with only one stop at a Starbucks.

So…Justine and I started talking about our trips we want to take. The discussion ranged anywhere from the national parks we’d like to see to our disdain for the current day flying experience to our family vacations. It slowly dawned on us that we talk a lot of talk when it comes to our plans to see the grandeur that is the United States of America. We promised ourselves we’d see the Grand Canyon in 2011. We promised ourselves we’d visit family in Colorado and Seattle and snowboard at the same time. The current gas prices and, as we mentioned, our disdain for the current day flying experience definitely are  factors that have kept us from traveling. But, you know what…you only live once.