Liz and Ben do Anna Maria Island 2026

Must have smelt blood - too big to mess with!   We played golf at Manatee again today. The wind had dropped and the sun shone all afternoon so it was very pleasant. Our partner for the first 9 holes was a canadian man who could out talk Ben! We were joined on the back 9 with another canadian, as his partner was only playing 9 holes. The 2 canadian men seemed to be from the same Toronto area as each other so they talked together about places they both knew. We were left to play on our own. They were both good golfers. Ben did some fishing before we played - he was soon joined by his 'pet' heron who was suitable rewarded!! Hungry Heron happily fed!!

Ben had a golf club meeting via Teams this morning so I went for a walk and looked in some of the local shops. This afternoon we went to the ice cream shop, "Two Scoops" and enjoyed our ice creams. It was warmer today but still quite windy. Our American neighbours, who live permanently in the house next door to where we are staying, gave us tickets for the latest local amateur dramatic play. We had met them last year and at the end of our stay we gave them all our left over bits that we couldn't bring back to England. Andy has quite a bad dose of shingles and didn't feel like going to the theatre so they offered the tickets to us. The production team stage about 5 plays a year and the one we went to see was called "Second Time Around". We weren't sure if we would understand the american accent or the jokes as it was a comedy, but we got the jokes and innuendoes and it was very funny. It was about a retired widow and widower who were going to live togethe...

Yesterday was a quiet day for us. The sun was shining but the wind was chilly and quite strong.  We spent some time in AVIS in Bradenton seeing if we could merge our 2 car hires, which in the event we were unable to.  We were trying to avoid having to drive to Tampa Airport to change our car as we have 2 bookings.  We have come to the conclusion that the cheapest option is to change the cars - hey ho. Today the wind had dropped a little and the temperatures rose. It was much more pleasant. Ben was more successful with his fishing. We played golf at Manatee. We were joined today by an american couple who were from Indiana but living for 6 months in this area in their camping trailer. They said it was an eye opener living in the snug conditions. They are due to return to Indianna soon and were a bit concerned about towing their trailer over mountains in the snow. Steve played golf from the red tees and sometimes hit the ball a long way occasionly in the right direction.Sall...

We woke this morning to a cold, windy but sunny day. It has been sunny all day but playing golf we needed all the golf clothing we had brought with us. Ben did a little fishing and was surprised to see out hungry heron was back.  He was fed 2 fish in quick succession and no doubt went to bed satisfied! We played today at Buffalo Creek. It took us ages to drive to leave the island, we are not sure why but  think it may be as it was so cold people were leaving the beach area. We were 10 minutes late arriving at the course but they were quite happy to let us go out when we arrived. We played on our own and found the wind made both direction and distance difficult- neither of us played very well. We played the quickest round to date taking just over 3 and a half hours to complete the round. Tomorrow should be a little warmer but still cold for the time of year. Our hungry heron is back Liz is "Tee'd off" as we were driving from the same Tee location - equality reigns!!

It has been very windy today so has felt cooler. In fact the temperature was the same but the wind made it feel cooler. That said it was very comfortable sitting out on the deck with a breeze blowing. I went for a walk this afternoon along the Bayside coast and the edge of the water was as calm and clear as a millpool with quite a few people swimming in it. We didn't go to the other side of the island to see what the sea was like there but I expect it would have been very windy on the beach.  We had a thunderstorm pass over for about an hour in the early evening. Tomorrow is forecast to be much cooler so maybe we will need to wear more clothes for golf! Cloud formation as the thunderstorm approached

We were booked to play golf this afternoon at Buffalo Creek. When we left here we could see black clouds over the area we were travelling to. As we pulled into the carpark of the golf club it was just starting to rain and everyone was coming off the course as there was thunder about. We went into the shop and were allowed a rain check so could play the course another day. We sat in the carpark and it continued to pour with rain for about half an hour. We debated whether to hang on and wait for the rain to stop but the sky looked black all around so we decided to give up and come home. We had driven only about a mile away and everywhere was dry so the heavy rain was very local. It was the annual St Patricks Day procession on Anna Marie Island and we just managed to get back before the roads closed for the procession. We walked to a view point and waited for the procession to start. There were lots of people about all wearing green. The procession eventually went past us with everyone in...

 We decided to have a day out today so we visited the Mote science education aquarium. It is situated on the campus of the Sarasota university. When we eventually arrived there (the traffic was bad) we found it was very busy with lots of families. We had booked on line so were able to go straight in. There were 3 floors of  displays of every kind of marine animal and fish particularly local to this area. There were very large tanks, some of which you could walk under, with fish, snails, jellyfish, urchins and animals- penguins, terrapins, turtles and sea otters. We walked around for about an hour and a half and Ben took lots of photos. It was just after lunch when we came out so we found a Macdonalds to get something to eat. The portions seemed much bigger than UK so we didn't need any more food for the rest of the day. We had to call in Publix on the way home and that was crowded too with people. We had a job to find a parking space and one of the shop workers said she had ne...