Vita Sotto il Sole: Longboat Key

The plan: take the Autotrain down (I need my car), Matt arrives later, and then we take a couple of days to drive home.

The autotrain was pretty nice, in the sense that I didn’t have to pack to fly; I stuffed everything and anything I wanted into my car. Then my car was stuffed on the train. And by every/anything I wanted, I mean exactly that. I took a case of wine, spices/oils/vinegars and such for cooking, Matt’s fishing rod/tackle box, just about all the clothes I own, 417 pairs of shoes, all my jewelry, 327 books, 4 purses, and toiletries over 3 ounces and more than fit into a quart size Ziploc. Ha, suck on that airline liquids rule maker!!! Now, the downside to the train situation is that it took as long to get to Sanford on the rails as it would to drive there, maybe a couple hours longer, actually. I’m not really sure why this is the case, but it is. The seat was super roomy and comfy since I had to be on it for 17 hours, minus the loud, rude, kinda low rent clientele that kept walking up and down the aisles yelling and acting generally retarded at 5am. Positive, I was one car from the lounge car, aka pharmacy for liquid self-medicating; negative, see previous low rent clientele statement. Matt called it Walmart on rails . . . pretty accurate! Once in Sanford, I had about a 3 hour drive southwest to get to Longboat Key. Drove right past Disney World and thought about nipping into Epcot, just to feel like I was in Europe for a little while. Alas, I just kept going.

Longboat Key is a barrier island that is made up of mostly residential properties. There is big money on this little island, some of the houses are unbelievable. I’m staying at a great little property that is made up of 2 little cottages and then 3 villas. There is a big pool for all the houses and then a private little garden/pool for just the cottages. Since the Jasmine cottage is empty, I pretty much have the little slice of heaven all to myself. I will be most un-neighborly if someone arrives to that cottage in the next 2 weeks. The beach is right across the street and is great. No crowds, since it’s all residential and there is no public parking, clear water that just rolls in across the sandbar, great sea shells to collect, and awesome sunsets.

The first 3 days were a little touch and go. It rained, and I mean poured, for 3 solid days. There isn’t much to do here other than be on the beach or at the pool, so I was seriously considering saying fuck it, and heading home. The weather forecast was exactly the same for the next 10 days; mamma can’t have that! Fortunately, the weather people were dead wrong and it’s been beautiful for the last 3 days. My days pretty much look like this: wake up, have coffee on the beach and try to beat the blue hairs to the best shells that have washed in overnight, have breakfast, make sangria for later in the day (gotta let the fruit soak for a couple of hours), go to the beach, have lunch, lay by the pool, get sangria for sundowners on the beach, drink sangria until the sun goes down. Sometimes I have to decide between sangria and gin&tonics. It’s exhausting :-)