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Dream Location in Cape Coral

The Villas 'Florida Travel BLOG'

We love Florida and often spend our vacations and travels in the Sunshine State every year. We also love the sun and warmth that the climate always shares with us. We also love to be on the road discovering new areas and locations or to rediscover well-known. Sometimes there is the special moment or situation that sticks in our minds when we've been on side routes and narrow streets having discovered lonely places or met and talked to interesting people.
Where ever we’ve been, we've met lovely and communicative people. We talked, got hints and recommendations and always a smile.

If you love nature, wildlife, unexpected landscapes and spots, then here, in this blog, you'll find a lot to discover before starting your journey to Florida.

2022-08-31

Trip-Part #1: Our Tour to Cedar Key

Our goal is the Panhandle, an area we’ve never been before. We drove up from Cape Coral to the west coast with stops in Venice, Sarasota, St. Pete and Tampa, to reach Cedar Key as our first destination on our way.

Cedar Key is located on an island that is perfect for exploring by bicycle and a nearby island makes a great kayaking destination. The town is full of art and artists and has several good seafood restaurants. The coast line is beautiful with shallow bays and beaches. Cedar Key has changed a lot (for the better) since our last visit in 2016. The harbour area is no longer decayed and neglected, today it impresses with nice new architecture and new building structures hidden behind old looking fassades. The old pier has nice restaurants, a hotel, shops and areas to stroll around.

We stoped for a drink at the famous haunted Island Hotel Cedar Key with its Neptune Lounge (a historic drawing of Neptune with the bare-breasted mermaids gave the name) RECOMMENDED!. The charming little town, with fewer than 1.000 permanent residents, is Florida’s second oldest town with dozens of interesting old buildings. Time doesn’t slow down in Cedar Key it actually seems to go backwards. The local joke here is that it takes two hours to watch 60 Minutes. We walked through the streets of the old village, most houses have porch-covered walkways in the front and are very charming, some properties were in remodeling mode. Cedar Key is an ideal place to unplug from the world.

If you want to spend more time in Cedar Key, then visit the Cemetery Point Park, a hidden place but perfect for walking around in silence.

I don’t want to forget to mention the Forgotten Coast with the tiny village Fowlers Bluff on the way further north on the Suwannee River, where we took the photos below, Steinhatchee and Keaton Beach along the 361/400 are worth a stop.