No matter if you live in New York City, Chicago, Denver or Florida you might sometimes forget you live in a tourist destination. We often forget as we get wrapped up in day-to-day life that we live in a tourist destination – we call Sarasota, FL home.
Over the past two weekends we have played tourist in our hometown, which was a lot of fun. We have welcomed two different visiting family members and escorted them all over. It reminds us of why we started coming here as tourists, then dreamed of calling this place home, and now actually call it home.
We got to go to “our” beach, Lido Beach, with our daughter as well as spend a whole day at the pool. I can’t tell you the last time we did that! We also visited Historic Spanish Point in Osprey, FL. We explored art fairs, shopped in the shopping district of St. Armand’s, and ate at Tommy Bahama a few times.
It was fun to be a tourist again. And without fail, after any house guest leaves us we always say to each other “we should do that more often”. We get to the pool once in a while, but we never get to the beach. We rarely make the time to visit shops, museums, and restaurants – usually with the excuse of “it will be packed with tourists”. The funny thing is, when we take tourists there, it isn’t too packed.
While I was Wandering: The view of Sarasota Bay from Historic Spanish Point
These past two weekends have been a reminder that it is OK to be a tourist in your hometown. It reminds us of why we love where we live. It reminds us of old trips. It reminds us of why we moved here. We love living in Florida, we love the Gulf Coast. Now we just need to make time to remember to be tourists more than twice a year and enjoy all our hometown has to offer.
While I was Wandering 