Venice Florida

[JoanieBlon]

Over last weekend, Mike and I headed down to Venice Florida, which lies on the Gulf of Mexico about 70 miles south of Tampa. The trip down took us about 1-1/2 hours. Mike wanted to go hunting for sharks' teeth on the beaches there. Venice is the self-proclaimed "Sharks' Tooth capital of the World." We managed to find about 18 of them while we were there.

Although I have been to many of the Florida Gulf beaches near Tampa, I had never actually been into the town of Venice. I was blown away! Venice Florida is an enchanting, sleepy little Florida town that you'd expect to find in the 1930s. It hasn't fallen prey to all the high-rise development that you find in Sarasota, St. Pete, Clearwater and other local beaches.

The downtown residential area is really beautiful with wide divided streets lined with huge old oak tress that spread their canopy over the lush, gassy median areas.

The downtown commerical area encompasses about 9 square blocks. There are numerous businesses there including trendy home decor and clothing shops, jewelry shops, a wine and coffee shop, and also a number of varied restaurants, ice cream parlors, candy shops and taverns ~ something for everyone.

We stayed at an OLD FLORIDA (1950s) style motel ~ VENICE BEACH VILLAS . I LOVED the place! The rooms and suites, each of which had some sort of kitchen area, were spacious and clean. There were also two gas barbeques for guests to use if desired. There was a heated pool, guest laundry, games & books, coolers and chairs to take along to the beach. The hotel also had quite a few old fashioned "cruiser" bikes that could be used to toodle around town. Additionally, they had special baskets on poles which are used when looking for sharks' teeth. Off season rates were very reasonable. The hotel was in an ideal location ~ on the main street, Venice Blvd., and located 2 short blocks from the business area and 3 blocks from the beach. We were able to walk or bike just about anywhere we wanted to go. NO traffic jams!

The beaches in Venice (there are a number of them) have clean white sand and WARM (87F when we were there) Gulf water that, while not quite as blue as what you find in Playa, is still VERY lovely.

Mike and I were SO busy while we were there, that I didn't take ANY photos, but you can get a general feel of Venice by clicking HERE . Each of the photos is actually a thumbnail that opens into a slightly larger picture.


We had SUCH a good time, that we have reservations at the same place for the end of August! We plan on renting jet skis and exploring the extensive Intercoastal Waterway as well as the Gulf. Venice Florida may not be quite as "exotic" as Playa, but for us, it's sure LOTS cheaper. No long (and EXPENSIVE) plane flights, or Customs and Immigrations delays coming and going. I'll try to get some photos next month when we're there.

[MWC]

We got a timeshare in Englewood a few Aprils ago. We just loved that area from Venice down to Englewood, right before Cape Coral. Englewood, especially, has managed to stay fairly undeveloped, because it falls into some sort of "no man's land" between Sarasota County and the county to the south.
If we were in a position to "bottom feed" right now, we would be making a bee-line for that area.
We found lots of smallish shark's teeth in Englewood, right in front of our timeshare. There was also a state park-beach about 5 minutes drive south that had fantastic shell collecting. Good fishing, too; there's a fairly major river that feeds into the gulf right there.
Would love to get back to that area sometime soon!