Monthly Musings and cloudy/cold days in Florida

Linking up with Patty for Monthly Musings:

1. Oh yes, it's feeling like spring. We've had a few really nice warm days as well as some cold ones. Very mercurial which is very spring!

2. I celebrate Easter and Mother's Day. Also my birthday is in the spring which for reasons I can't comprehend is not a actually a holiday (haha) but I do know of a few people who celebrate it 😉

3. No big trips. A couple of small ones is all.

4, I love a good Easter ham. Carrot cakes seems like spring to me. I made a carrot cake for my birthday/Easter last year that was really good. My birthday is in April and not infrequently falls near Easter (one year a few years ago it fell on Easter).

Proof that I made the cake (no this is not a sign that things weren't copacetic at home- this is a typical mess when I decorate with icing!)

Me n' my cake

I also made cookies :).

I think we must have hosted a meal?? Two out of the three kids were home to celebrate me/Easter.

5. I'm not aware of any spring festivals.

6. Zyrtec!

7. Seeing buds on trees, hearing lawn mowers

8. I like spring rain quite a bit... provided I don't have outdoor plans. I don't like days on end of rain. But a rainy day here or there, bring it!

9. Probably the aforementioned carrot cake

10. I can't say as I have one.

Now I'm going to talk about the two days in Florida last week that were not nice weather wise at all!

These days were Tuesday and Wednesday.

Tuesday was St. Patrick's Day and the luck o' the Irish was naught to be found in Florida vis a vis the weather. It was CHILLY all day. I mean, it warmed up some and by warm up I mean it went from fifty five degrees most of the day to warming up to 60 by the end of the afternoon. 

Alyssa and I had both gotten sunburned on Monday so a day of not being in the sun didn't sound too bad. We did hope to spend some time outdoors but we ended up doing very little of that. This was the first spring break where we had two less than ideal weather days in a row... but it was also the first spring break where Alyssa had actual work to do during the break so it sort of worked out? If the weather had been lovely the whole time, it likely would have made working that much less desirable! Unbeknownst to Alyssa when she accepted an internship for the summer was the fact that the company wanted her to do some work before the summer. Since their busy season is the summer, they wanted her to be up and running and completely knowledgeable by the summer; in furtherance of that, they asked her if she'd put in a few hours each week until summer and Alyssa said she would.

So Tuesday morning Alyssa did some work and I read. For lunch, we ordered food to go from one of the restaurants in our hotel and then took our food outside. The outside area had cute seating arrangements with a nice view of the ocean. We started to eat outside and then realized we were too cold to comfortably eat outside!

This scene reminded me of coastal England for some reason (not that I've been there). Chilly, windy, cloudy, and the sea in the distance. 

We split an appetizer of mozzo sticks and shared this seafood (blackened flounder and shrimp) platter. Everything was so good!

We went inside to eat and then settled back into our room. We both catnapped in the afternoon which is something neither of us normally do. I think we both may have had a touch of sun poisoning. We didn't feel awful we (or at least I) didn't feel quite right. We watched an episode of two of the show we started watching, Bloodline, before getting ready for dinner. We ate at a restaurant called Yucatan- it was one restaurant that we remembered eating at back in 2020 when we were all in Florida together on FMB.

A general note about dining in FMB, I don't believe that any fine dining restaurants exist on FMB. I think you'd have to leave the island and go to the town of Fort Myers or a nearby more upscale island like Sanibel to find fine dining. All of the restaurants that I could find information about were the kinds of ones we went to: fun vibe with loud (though not overbearingly so) music, casual "normal" food like burgers, wings, tacos, fried appetizers, paper napkins in dispensers on every table, plastic cups for pop, etc. I guess, very casual, would be a concise descriptor. These types of restaurants are A-Ok with us but I'm sure some people prefer higher end dining experiences. Prepare to leave Estero Island if that is your goal!

So ambitious- Alyssa donned this sundress for the non sunny non warm day (of course she brought a jacket!) when we went out to dinner. 

May have been our favorite meal- we shared three appetizers. Ahi tuna, ceviche and gator bites!

We got ice cream for dessert and walked around town a little bit before heading to our hotel. Town was LOUD. It was St. Paddy's day (now evening) after all. The less than warm temperatures did not put a damper on the celebrating. 

The next morning, we went out to get coffee and there was NO ONE out on the street. This wasn't super early- more like 9:00 am. I told Alyssa that she was likely the only college student on spring break there who didn't (or wouldn't when awakened) have a hangover! Alyssa had some work to do for her internship. The weather was warmer than the day before- it was about 60 by mid morning. I decided to take a walk on the beach while Alyssa did some work.

These are pieces of a large pier that was demolished by Hurricane Ian back in 2022.

It's being rebuilt- this sign gave information about the destruction on the island due to Hurricane Ian. It was the third costliest hurricane behind Katrina and Harvey.

I walked to the tip of the island. There is a state park at the tip. Really pretty! This is where we had family pics taken back in 2020.

Here is the pier from a distance.

The following three pictures are that same pier in 2020.

Very close to that pier is a lively section of the island called Times Square. Prior to the hurricane, it was a spot with small restaurants, bars, ice cream shops, little shops- very touristy, very happening especially in the evenings. Hurricane Ian wiped everything that was standing in Times Square out. Most of the hotels withstood the hurricane (though they all had damage) but smaller buildings did not make it. There has been little rebuilding done on Times Square. Most restaurants reopened as food trucks. You can see where buildings once stood. Such destruction! It was sad to hear about the destruction but Times Square was packed during spring break (in the evenings anyway) so at least the food trucks are getting business. 

That afternoon, we went on a boat ride! It was a dolphin sighting cruise. 

We saw lots and lots of... fins!!

We did see most of this guy!

I forget the name of the place where we had dinner. It was an indoor/outdoor type place (they had heaters going cause the outside was not warm!) and the food was delicious comfort food! Such a good pretzel and beer cheese to start off with. 

Alyssa had fish tacos and I had this taco salad. Not too many culinary experiences surpass the joy that is a deep fried  food vessel, lol. I don't order taco salads often but when I do, I eat every scrap of the fried vessel!!

After dinner, we walked around Times Square and got ice cream. 

We went back to our hotel to watch our show on Netflix. I noticed at one point that it looked a bit sunny out (it hadn't been sunny all day). Sure enough, the sun came out just in time to set!! How nice of it. Interestingly, the day it was the sunniest, our first day there, it got inexplicably cloudy just before sunset and we didn't see a gorgeous sunset. This day was the exact opposite. Strange!! I took these photos from our balcony. 

A nice ending to our cool day. The next day was our last one and it was nice and warm, thankfully!