FMB- The sunny daze- spring break part 2

We made it to Florida for a short spring break and we made it home! We had a good time but I was honestly really looking forward to coming home. Donnie's work is relentless right now as he deals with the work that earns money and with the work of moving the firm from one location to another. Donnie is part owner of the firm and all the owners have been working hard with the logistics of moving. Donnie is the president of the firm and by nature a problem solver so he's come up with many solutions to problems/issues that have arisen and continue to arise regarding the move. The move should be complete by the end of March but it's crunch time and I felt a bit guilty in leaving home during this time. But, speaking of time, Alyssa's time of having spring breaks will come to an end, too. She's not studying anything in the education field so having a spring break is not going to be a perk of her vocational endeavors when she graduates college. The two of us going away together on spring break is a tradition and I'm grateful that it happened 💞

Speaking of going away together, Alyssa's friends began to talk of a spring break trip earlier in the year and she told them right away that she was out- she told them she spring breaks with me. She told me her best friend at school loved that Alyssa goes away with me and told Alyssa she was going to ask her mom if her mom wanted to go on a spring break trip with her. I told Alyssa she could have invited her friend and mom to come down to Florida with us. It could be a dual mother daughter spring break trip. Alyssa said that she was sure that would have been fun but she wanted it to be just the two of us. Awwww!!!! 

We decided to go to South Florida to try to ensure that we had warm weather (as it turned out, the week was an extremely cold one throughout Florida- being south was better than being north but our weather was the coldest it's ever been on a spring break Florida trip!). The past two spring breaks, we'd been south on the Atlantic side. Two years ago, we stayed in Fort Lauderdale and last year we stayed in Miami. This year, I suggested we stay somewhere south but on the Gulf side. We decided to go to Fort Myers Beach.

I've mentioned in the past that FMB holds a special place in my heart. It was our family's first ever vacation destination back in 2008- it was the first place where the kids saw the ocean. It's also the place of the last time our family has vacationed in Florida together- late summer of 2020. We've all been to Florida since then in numerous familial combinations but we haven't been there together since we were all in Fort Myers Beach. 

Many buildings/ landmarks in FMB were destroyed when Hurricane Ian wreaked havoc on Estero Island (the island on which FMB sits) as well as other areas in southwest Florida in 2022. In the aftermath of the hurricane, I received email updates from the resort that we stayed at in FMB both in 2008 and 2020- the Pink Shell- regarding the devastation to the area.

I looked into staying at the Pink Shell resort again for our spring break trip. However, I found the price to stay there to be a bit too prohibitive. I think it was about $600 or $700 a night. That's more than I'm willing to pay for a two person trip especially when Donnie is working so hard at home for us to have the means to travel. I found a place on the beach (really our only criteria!) called the Lani Kai. It was fine. Not high class by any means but it was fine. A bit of a rougher crowd (St. Patrick's Day falling during the week we were here didn't help to improve my opinion of the clientele staying there (besides us who did not partake in St. Paddy's festivities)) than at the Pink Shell but whatever...

I'll let the pictures do the talking for the most part...

The first day we arrived was the warmest by far and so I don't regret that 6:45 am flight out of Cincinnati- everything went smoothly travel wise both to the Punta Gorda airport and then in our Lyft (nice driver- Doug- from Michigan) and then to FMB. We were in beach chairs by 11:45 am on a beautiful sunny day! (It would not be sunny again until our last day so the sun was a real treat 🏖).

We both dozed in the sun which was lovely. Alyssa had not slept at all the night before and I'd slept for maybe an hour and a half (we were a bit stressed about us even being able to go on the trip- see my previous post) so we were both tired. Unfortunately, despite using sunscreen, we both got burned. Well, our sunburns would have two days to get better because there was little to no sun in the next two days to burn us... That's a story for a different day.

The family in front of us brought two parrots(!) to the beach. This picture doesn't show it well but one of the parrots, the blue one, is pictured on top of the beach chair. The other one, a green parrot, sat on top of the chair next to it but the umbrella is covering it in the photo. So strange and very "Florida" 😆.

After being in the sun (and water- it felt great!) for a few hours, we showered and got ready to eat dinner.

We decided to wear our matching sun dresses to dinner that night since the forecast showed that this evening would likely be the warmest. We picked out a restaurant on the bay side of the island called Snug Harbor. We split an appetizer and an entree of freshly caught grouper with mashed potatoes and green beans- both were delicious. As we were leaving, a woman at the table near us came up to us and asked if she could take our pictures for us. She said she loved our matching dresses. We chatted with her for a bit. She was so sweet. Unfortunately, the lighting was terrible and the pictures didn't turn out great at the restaurant. We also took some pictures on the beach and at a mural. 

We had this fish dip as an appetizer. So good! The jalapeno pieces were a nice, hot addition and the carrot curls were too cute :).

Grouper from the Gulf- the menu said the restaurant's own boats catch the grouper that the restaurant serves. Fresh seafood is not super common in our landlocked state so we had to take advantage :).

I love the following two pictures that a lady at the restaurant took of us. I wish the lighting were better!

Walking back to our place after eating dinner

Also on our way back to our place, I saw this mural and thought it would make a good photo background. I took Alyssa's picture and she took mine and then as we were leaving, this guy came running out of a store near us to tell us he wanted to take our picture together! How sweet of him!

I'm squatting awkwardly to try to have the hat part of the mural be on my head

We took some pictures at the beach near our hotel

I'm so glad we got matching dresses- they were a fun touch and we received quite a few compliments from passersby on the street as we walked around and ducked into stores to shop 😉. I have not had matching dresses with Alyssa since she and Abby were little and the three of us had matching dresses. We had three sets of matching dresses that were fun to wear to church when the girls were little. And of course I had the girls wear matching clothes with each other quite a lot when they were younger. I do love a good match! These dresses were an inexpensive and impulse purchase at TJ Maxx when Alyssa was home for the weekend earlier in March and was actually Alyssa's idea. 

Our evening activity was getting ice cream at Coldstone and then I suggested we start watching a series on Netflix that I had seen a couple of years before with Donnie. When we were eating dinner at Snug Harbor something about seeing the boats in the harbor reminded me of the show Bloodline. It was out in 2014 or something like that and takes place in the Florida Keys. It's very water based being set in the Keys, a bit dark, and very dramatic. The acting is quite good (it stars Coach Taylor from Friday Night Lights) and multiple story lines make it interesting; it's shot documentary style which makes it seem very real. The language is truly horrific and part of me is not sure we should have kept watching it once we started (I had completely forgotten how bad the language was until Alyssa and I started watching it). I know that Alyssa hears terrible words since so many young people (and people of all ages, really) use terrible language commonly. Anyway, it is a good series, story line wise. And it was neat to watch it while we were in Florida. 

The following two days were the coldest I've ever been in Florida! I'm going to write about the "cold days" in anther post. The last day that we were in Florida, it was warm and sunny again. It was not hot- the temperature didn't get above 72 but it felt great to have the sun shining. 

We spent a good part of the day outside and in the sun. Ok, I guess I was wrong, it looks like it at least got up to 74 degrees! 

We had dinner that evening at a restaurant called The Whale. Interesting about the rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Ian- the restaurant was badly damaged in the hurricane and didn't reopen (it was completely rebuilt on its former site) until November of 2025. 

We got ceviche as an appetizer- we loved it! 

And we split crab stuffed flounder. Either the flounder or the crab was... not soft. It was an odd texture. Alyssa wasn't crazy about it so she had most of the ceviche and I had crunchy crab/flounder (it tasted fine!).

Ice cream for dessert, because, ice cream!! Though we got Cold Stone the first evening we were at FMB, every other evening we got it at the Ice Cream Parlor.

I'll write more about the non sunny days and what we did when we couldn't sit out on the beach due to the weather being cloudy and chilly. 

Linking up with Joanne for Talking about it Tuesday