Over my spring break this year me, my mom, and my dad all went to Anna Maria island near Tampa, Florida. We left early in the morning on April first, and we came back on the eighth. We all woke up at three in the morning to make sure we wouldn’t miss our flight. In my opinion you should always leave earlier than the minimum amount of time it takes to get there. You never know what could happen. Anyways, we took off from the airport in Columbus Ohio to Nashville Tennessee, where we had a layover. As we were coming in from our descent me and my parents all thinking we weren’t going to make our flight because we only had fifteen minutes to get their. What we didn’t think of was that our phones had not hooked up to data yet so the time difference hadn’t kicked in. So we were actually early to get to the gate. We boarded the plane and landed in Tampa where we then had to drive to the island.
I didn’t realize I had been to the island before until we were driving to the island. It finally hit me when we went to a small restaurant called Mr. Bones BBQ. Once we had arrived there it finally hit me, I had been here before.This was a very small restaurant, it probably could hold a little over thirty to forty people. It was very, very, small. They had a sign and it had this quote which I thought was kind of cool “NO SALT , PEPPER, KETCHUP, ETC. IN DINING ROOM. DON’T EVEN ASK. OUR FOOD IS EXPERTLY MADE BY NEW ORLEANS TRAINED CHEFS. NO IMPROVEMENT NEEDED” end of quote. And let me tell you they were very right. I had a burger and it was one of the best ones I have had in a very long time. One of my favorite meals was at a place called Lobstah’s. This was my favorite meal the entire trip. I had a seafood dish called the seafood Anna Maria. The actual dish is the picture above. I expected this place to be a copy cat of Red Lobsters, but boy was I wrong. This place was a hundred times better. This was probably because the seafood that they use is all local and is fresh and doesn’t have to travel long distances to the restaurant. Of course though there were lots of other really good restaurants too, but it would take a couple paragraphs to tell you about all of them.
The scenery down in Anna Maria is amazing. There are lots of palm trees, flowers, and lots of wildlife. We stayed at a place called the Blue Water beach club. This place was a older resort but the main attraction was that it was right on the ocean, and it had a beach access for all of the guest’s. For most of the week we were on the beach swimming, fishing, and laying in the sun. You couldn’t have asked for better weather. It didn’t rain all week and the only time you even came close to a bad day was when there were a couple clouds in the sky. The second day we were down there we decided to buy some fishing poles and gear to fish on the beach. We figured that the day before we left we would ship it back to Ohio through the post office. Anyway, some of the locals showed us a good type of bait to use, and it was right in the sand. They were called sand fleas and the fish gobbled them right up. They looked like a big pale regular flea. To find them you sift through the sand with a type of basket and rinse the extra sand with water. This is what you would use as bait instead of shrimp. The weather, and fishing were great the entire time we were down there.
On April fourth my parents and I went para sailing. I had never been parasailing before, so I didn’t know what to expect. We were also joined by a father and his two kids on the boat too. The captain of the boat took us out into the Gulf of Mexico near the beach to parasail. We decided to go because for the past couple of days we had seen a lot of boats parasailing and, since we really didn’t have anything planned we decided to go. I went first with the other father’s son. The instructor hooked us up to the parachute and the captain picked up speed. The parachute instantly started to lift us up farther and farther into the air. Finally we could see the whole island. It looked so small from all the way up in the sky. Everything was so quiet, all you could hear was the wind blowing in your face. The coolest thing I saw was a sea turtle swimming right below the surface of the water. I had a really cool experience parasailing, I will definitely want to do it again. I’m the one on the left in the picture.
On the last day we were in Anna Maria we went out fishing with a guide. His name was Craig, and he took us out fishing on his boat. He runs a charter business by himself in the Bradenton area, which is where we were. He took us into a inshore bay in Sarasota. We told him we didn’t care what kind of fish we caught as long as we caught something, and boy we did. Together we all caught at least ten sea trout, and six snook. Snook are long yellow and silver fish with a black line that dips down their side. And the trout is what is pictured above. The snook are very fun to catch and they put up a real fight. We kept about six of the all the trout we caught, but we didn’t catch any snook big enough to keep. Craig filleted the trout for us so we could take it to a restaurant to be cooked. We went to a place called the Sandbar, which was right on the ocean. They cooked the fish for us two different ways, blackened, and fried. I have never had fresher fish than that. I had a really fun time fishing on the boat with the guide.
I had a great time in Anna Maria. I highly advise anyone to visit there if you like the ocean. It would probably take you a month to do everything on the island, and it is absolutely perfect this time of year. I hope you enjoyed reading about my trip to Anna Maria island.