Saturday was our first full day here in Florida, and as I said, we spent the better part of the day at Busch Gardens, riding the rides and visiting the Zoo section.  If you go to Busch Gardens and you are a AAA member, you can get discount coupons for 4 bucks off each ticket at their offices before you leave. At almost 34 bucks a ticket, any discount helps!

We left Busch Gardens at around 4 pm, and started the drive down I-70 to Sanibel.  We had decided to stop in Sarasota for dinner.  Sarasota was a very small beach type town, but it had a VERY large shopping area, set up in a 'circle' design, and appropriately named "St. Armand's Circle".  This is definetly the shopping mecca for upscale designer clothing and upscale everything - from housewares to unique stuff to dining.  We wanted to eat at the Tommy Bahama restaurant, but as popular as it was, there was a 2 hour wait for dinner!  So we walked around and found a small, sort of Jimmy Buffet-esque restaurant called Coconut Joe's.  The food was decent, the prices were cheap (unusual in this part of town!) and the atmosphere was upbeat, lively, somewhat noisy - but they had a live band doing Jimmy Buffet songs.  All the restaurants in the Circle are on the main walk, and a lot (like this one) were open air - you could sit right on the walk and people watch, or sit further inside where they were blowing AC into the open balmy air...  It worked a bit, we were a bit warm and so we sat inside.

We spent about 2 hours including our time eating walking around the shops and looking. My husband and I are great lovers of the Tommy Bahama clothing line - you can only visit the stores in Sarasota, Naples, and I think one or 2 other upscale Florida town.  They make what you would call "resort wear".  Very well made clothing, and quite unique.  Looks like they are working on getting a website up HERE.  Of course, we became familiar with the clothing because you can buy it at South Moon Under (a local chain) or Nordstrom.

After some browsing (and realizing we still had about an hour or more to go until Sanibel) we headed back out to the interstate.  It took us until about 11 pm that night to get to Sanibel - we hadn't counted on the fact that once you leave the interstate in the Ft. Myers area, that the road back to Sanibel is a one lane, local, 30 mph road with LOTS of construction and potholes to slow you down!  So we added about another hour onto our drive from this factor!  We pulled up to our hotel - the absolutely beautiful and incredible Sanibel Harbour Resort and Spa - at about 11pm, right in the midst of a reception from an earlier wedding!  What a hoot!  After checking in, we went down into the lobby bar, and had drinks with the reception guests and watched them dance to the tacky "easy listening" style music that the dj was spinning!  It was a great time for about an hour until they all left, and then the bar was dead.  So we headed off to bed for the night....

Photos of the Resort:
(the first 2 are postcards, the other is my photo)

          

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Day 1 Background

Day 3 The Resort & Sanibel

Day 4 Naples & Lover's Key State Park

Day 5 Edison House & Home

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