Florida
- Day 4
Monday 27th October 2025
Participants: Tam, Kev, India, Georgia and Charlie
Wake at 6am which is great as we want to go to the beach to watch the sunrise and beforehand need to organise lightning lane passes for Disney. We manage to do this of a fashion, but it's not easy tying up with Sharon and Evan's plans. They were able to book earlier as they arrive before us.
Quick breakfast of coffee and cereal then we drive north to the east shore. Unfortunately it did rain significantly last night and the clouds are still thick in the sky so no real sunrise today. We walk along the beach though and enjoy the birds.
[Kev - Tam and Inds will love me for including this photo of them showing their disapproval at the lack of a glorious Florida sunrise.]
[Kev - Still, it's not a completely useless morning.]
Drive home to drop off the car as we want to explore the city. The sun has now come out and it's quite pleasant. The first stop is Flagler College which is beautiful.
[Kev - It sure beats the school I went to.]
We also see the old fort and walk down St George's street which is a lot less busy than our first night and we check out a load of bars and restaurants, some of which were already on our list. It's such a beautiful old part of the city.
Back to pick up the car and we drive then to Magnolia Avenue, a beautiful tree lined street strewn with Spanish moss.
Next stop is TPC Sawgrass where we have a lunch reservation for 1pm. It's a nice 45 minute drive along the coast. We drive up through beautifully manicured grounds to the clubhouse.
[Kev - For those that don't know TPC Sawgrass is home to the Players tournament, which is often referred to as the 5th major, so it's a big deal. India and I love to watch golf, so this is a real treat for us.]
After a browse in the club shop we go to the restaurant. It's a beautiful setting and we choose to sit outside on the covered veranda.
[Kev - They fly the flag of the last winner of the Players, hence the Northern Irish flag for Rory Mcilroy.]
We all go for salad, Kev chicken caesar and Ind and I the TPC chicken salad with dried cherries, glazed pecans, blue cheese and a white balsamic dressing on the lettuce. I also have a glass of TPC sawgrass chardonnay. All very tasty. When we arrived there were a couple of people in the entrance hallway who directed us to the restaurant and also told us if we wanted a tour after eating to come and see them. A lovely lady named Nancy gave us a fascinating tour and filled us in on it's history, which even for a non golf fan like myself was interesting. It lasted about an hour as we were shown different rooms and shown items relating to its history. We gave a donation at the end as the "old story tellers" which is what the guide says they call themselves, give all the money to charities.
It was a fun few hours but
unfortunately we came at the wrong time of year as the course was
out of bounds as they do reseeding at this time of year.
Otherwise you can normally see some of the course on the
tour.
Drive back, which is roughly 40 minutes and relax by the pool.
Shower, change and head to Bin 39 a pretty wine bar off St George
street. We all have a different red wine and notice that
they also have Stringer wine from California. Having said that we
don't try it as it's very expensive. The wine was ok but
costly and there were no recommendations forthcoming from the
server when I said I wanted a full bodied red with oak.
[Kev - This isn't Bin 39, but it is a nice photo.]
[Kev - This is the seating area outside Bin 39. It amazed us how quiet everwhere was outside of the weekend. I guess it shows how much of the trade in this part of town is made up of locals.]
For supper we go to Harry's Seafood Bar and Grille as we'd already decided we fancied fish tonight. Google suggested this and we'd walked past yesterday and saw how pretty the patio area was. Well the walk to the restaurant was so quiet compared to Saturday night so we were somewhat shocked when we walked into the garden area and it's packed. It's a bonus as there's also a guitarist playing. We got a lovely table for 3 and enjoy some bread and garlic boursin type spread and then Kev and I have mahi mahi, mine is Mahi arugula with a light lemon beurre blanc , arugula salad and corn maque choux, all of which was delicious. Kev has the Mahi Mahi with lemon cream sauce, mash and broccoli. Ind has Cajun seared tuna, served rare, over creole rice with sesame soy greens and a sriracha aioli honey chilli glaze. We all thoroughly enjoy our meals and the cost was great compared to other restaurants we'd considered for fish. We have definitely noticed that things are so much more expensive on this trip than 3 years ago.
It's still relatively early so we go to Trade Winds which again has live music, a duo doing blues/rock music. We all have rum and coke before going home.
[Kev - I liked this place a lot and the beer was relatively cheap.]
