Chapter 2 - Breweries, Christmas Parade, and Beaches

- March 03, 2022

Hello again...

When we last left off, we had arrived at our Airbnb cottage in Pensacola, FL on December 4, 2021. It was located in the East Hill neighborhood. This was our first time staying in an Airbnb in a neighborhood versus a tourist area. It felt more like trying to live in a new place instead of vacation central.

I loved this neighborhood for two reasons. First, there were so many different styles of historic Florida style cottages...some fully restored and other that were diamonds in the rough. Second, the Christmas decorations were great when we went on evening walks. As the three weeks progressed, we saw more and more decorations.

One of my favorite Christmas light displays.

Bonnie, our Airbnb host, was the epitome of southern hospitality. She really loved that her three orange kitties were able to meet their first furry guest. We were her first stay that allowed a small dog. Charlie and the kitties got along fine.

The cottage had such great outside space.

Bonnie gave Charlie numerous little gifts throughout our stay.

She had lemons trees in her yard and told us we could use as many as we wanted. Pretty quickly we decided that we wanted to grill some shrimp with butter and her lemons. But where to get the best shrimp?

Lemon trees had a ton of lemons that were ripe and ready to eat.
I even took some lemons home to MN and made lemon bars for Christmas dinner.

We were quickly told that the world-famous Joe Patti's Seafood market had the best red tail shrimp.
Placing your order was quite an experience.
Once you took a number you better be ready to order because it was pretty intense.
They also sold apple-filled beignets outside that were the bomb!

End result..is your mouth watering?

Our first day we discovered the Alga Beer Co., which was in walking distance from our cottage. They were super dog friendly and one of the bartender's loved Charlie. We met a lot of fun friendly people there, especially Stephanie and Freddy who were very enthusiastic about our upcoming trip to Mexico and shared a lot of tips for traveling in Mexico since Freddy grew up in Mexico. This is also where we discovered stickers for our truck's top cargo carrier. We discovered breweries and surf shops are the places to find stickers.

We visited at 5 breweries and a few bars and got all these stickers.

We also loved the Pensacola postcard mural on the side of the Alga Beer Co.

Pensacola's downtown is awesome for a number of reasons. Not only is it a historic downtown (which I love), but we attended some great events there as well. It was named a "Great Places of Florida" by the American Planning Association. For those of who don't know, I was a city planner all of my career and a member of the American Planning Association for many years. Getting that type of award is not easy and Pensacola definitely deserved it.

The Downtown Pensacola Christmas Parade on Palafox St. was by far the best parade we have ever seen. The parade route was a winter wonderland under a canopy of 400,000+ lights. Simply stunning. We took the scooter with Charlie in his backpack. It worked great and had super close parking.

We estimate there had to be at least 35,000 people.

Check out the lady with the upside down umbrella....kind of a greedy way to collect candy and beads.

Charlie proudly displaying his beads from the parade.

Several times we went to Pensacola Beach and Navarre Beach, which are part of the Gulf Island National Seashore. The brilliant white sand beaches were at least 30 miles in length.

The sand looks like snow.

We also visited historic Fort Pickens and were not really impressed. It is hard to be impressed after seeing the El Moro Fort in San Juan, Puerto Rico. That fort is a monster of a building. Nonetheless, we checked it out.

Loved this armadillo as he treks across the field.

Some areas of the Fort are in pretty bad shape.

Other parts of the Fort have been restored.

Another thing I loved in Pensacola was The Grafitti Bridge - the 17th Avenue railroad trestle that get a fresh blast of spray paint daily from locals sharing messages of joy, love, and support.