Our Florida Vacation

As promised, I’m sharing all the details of our recent trip to Seaside in Florida. I had heard so many people rave about 30A in Florida and how dreamy all the little towns were, so I decided to start researching a place for our family to vacation at. 30A is a state road that hugs the coast in the panhandle of Florida and it goes right through the heart of the most beautiful towns. We decided to look into Seaside specifically after seeing so many bloggers rave about it on social media. I researched for several days, trying to find the perfect fit for our family and landed on a beautiful rental home in Watercolor. The reason I kept coming back to Watercolor is because anyone staying in that neighborhood will get passes to their beach club that has 3 pools, their camp watercolor pool area with a lazy river and kids pools as well as one other pool. I wanted to have the pool options for the kids in case the beaches were packed. I’m so glad we went that direction, and it turned out to be the perfect fit for our family.

House Details

We rented a house through 360 Blue, which is a rental agency. I found the house initially on VRBO, but decided to go right through the rental agency because it’s actually cheaper. VRBO always charges an extra fee, so I recommend going right through the agency itself. We were so pleased with the customer service of 360 Blue and had a wonderful experience. The reason we chose to rent a house is because we really wanted a private experience, and I’m so glad we did. Our neighborhood was very quiet and relaxing, and we loved all the extra room we had with the house.

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The house we chose had 3 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms. It had a lovely master suite with a walk in closet and private balcony. We loved that each bedroom had it’s own bathroom also. The kids all slept in the bunk room which had a double size bunkbed. It was perfect for them! The girls slept on the bottom and my son took the top bunk. Everything was so well thought out and we had everything we could have needed. Having a full kitchen really cut our meal budget down quite a bit. There is a Publix walking distance from the house, so we got groceries there to make a few meals. The house also comes with a grill, and we enjoyed using that as well.

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One of our favorite things about the house was that it came with a golf cart. A lot of people drive golf carts to get around. It’s a lot easier than trying to find parking in your car every day and dealing with all the sand and dirt from the beach in your vehicle. In Watercolor where we stayed, it has a parking garage right on the beach where you can park daily. That was so convenient, and made for a lot less walking which was nice. You can also rent a golf cart if you end up renting a house that doesn’t come with one.

Beach Details

The beach access varies depending on which neighborhood you’re staying in. They do have a public access you can walk to also. Since we stayed in Watercolor, we had access to the beach through them where you could rent 2 chairs and an umbrella for the day. It was $68 a day for the chair option, so we decided not to do that. We just walked down to an empty spot on the beach and sat on towels. The public beach didn’t have any hours set, but the towns with private beach access for their vacationers had set hours. I think our access closed at 9 or 10 pm. You can carry in your own chairs and coolers which is really nice, so we packed our own lunches a few of the days. They also had food and drink options at the beach club we were part of.

Thankfully we just missed spring breakers when we went, so it wasn’t super crowded on the beaches. If you are going during spring break, be prepared for it to be busy. We went the second week of April and I didn’t find it overly crowded or uncomfortable. We always found a quiet spot on the beach with no problem. So keep that in mind when you’re booking your trip.

Food Details

Seaside has a spot downtown that they call “The Hub”. They have several spots to eat there, as well as food trucks that line the street. Be prepared to pay big money if you’re planning to eat down there daily. We grabbed hot dogs from a food truck the first day we were there, and it was $45 for 5 hotdogs! That didn’t even include meals, just the hot dogs. Needless to say, we didn’t do that again. We did grab tacos from the Taco Bar one night in Seaside and we felt that was a very reasonably priced place.

In Watercolor where we stayed, they offer food at all the private pools we had access to. I felt the prices were pretty reasonable at the pools also. We ate at Camp Watercolor twice and the food was amazing! I highly recommend their nachos.

If you’re wanting a nice sit down restaurant, we loved FOOW. We ate there our last night and it was so good! It overlooks the ocean and has a beautiful balcony you can eat on. My husband had the blackened grouper and he said it was incredible.

We bought some groceries from the Publix right in town, so we made a few meals at home and ate a few meals out. I felt that was a good balance and saved us some money.

We also drove up to Destin one night and ate at The Back Porch. The food was great and the view was to die for! Literally right on the beach.

Trip Highlights

Some of our favorite things included….Building sand castles on the beach.

Swimming at Camp Watercolor.

The alligator show at Fudpuckers in Destin.

Golf cart rides.

And sunsets on the beach.

I’m so thankful for the memories we got to make on this trip!

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We absolutely loved this vacation, and had such a great experience for our first time. We definitely want to go back next year. Seaside is very family friendly and has so much to offer. We were there for 5 days and I feel like we didn’t even get to see all the things it had to offer. I can’t wait to go back and explore more!

I hope this post was helpful, and if you have any other questions, feel free to email me! Be on the lookout for my next post, which will be all my outfits from the trip.

Thanks for stopping by!

XO Becca