August 05th, 2020

I believe I've mentioned before that Sarasota has a pretty little park that is a lovely place for a short walk.  It's right on the bay next to a marina which is, no doubt, where the name came from, Bay Front Park.  

Often, if we have a weekend errand that takes us to Sarasota, we will also take the time to stop by for a leisurely stroll.  And that is what we did over the weekend.  Rain was predicted but while we were there, it was still mostly sunny.  Perfect!

For a small park, there is a lot of see and do.  To start with, there is a paved and measured walk that goes all the way around.  They call it the "Fitness Trail".  Not so much a trail as a sidewalk but still.

There are not one but two restaurants.  The one in the park, "O'learys"  has live music and jaunty yellow umbrellas over the outside seating. I've never eaten there but clearly a lot of people do. Seems like a great place to relax, enjoy a casual meal and watch the water. I especially like the party lights. Just adds a little something :)

The other restaurant in actually in the marina.  I'ts called, "Marina Jacks" and we have had a few meals there.  We've eaten both inside and dined al fresco.  From both spots, the water view is mighty fine.

As soon as we arrived, we noticed  the racket of wild parakeets.  Man they are loud!  All them squawking at once at high decibel and sounding for all the world like a crowd of angry shoppers all trying to be heard, talking over each other.  We could definitely hear them, but we couldn't see them.  Their bright green and yellow feathers blended perfectly with the foliage dang it.  And then suddenly, the entire flock would burst out of one tree and zoom to another and the yakyakyaking would start up again.  Soooooo in short, no photos of the wild parakeets.  We did find some other birds though:

And then there was the little black and white dog who walked up to me and sat at my feet gazing adoringly into my eyes grinning a funny little doggie grin.  I said "Hello", he licked my knee and walked away.  I did get a picture of him.

We walked past what passes for a tiny little beach, a lot of interesting trees and a playground.  We relaxed on a swing and admired the big bridge in the distance and of course the boats.

There were some statues here and there.  One of which has become rather controversial.

No, not the dolphins,  the sailor and the nurse statue from WWII.  That statue has become such a hot topic of conversation and argument that the town of Sarasota is today having a meeting discussing what they are going to do with it.  Odds are good it is going away forever and personally I think that is very sad.  I stand strongly against censorship and that's what this feels like to me.

We saw flowers of course.  No matter where you go here, there are flowers. Whether you plant them intentionally or not, they will spring up pretty much everywhere

We did enjoy watching the boats.  Oh and there was a funny, quirky, serendipitous thing too.

Tim and I actually started our day at the jetty here in Venice.  And as we walked along we noticed a much larger than usual boat.  There were a lot of boats out that morning and this one stood out. Even though initially it was pretty far out toward the horizon line, we could still tell that it was a Very Big Boat.  The point is that we noticed it.  And eventually we realized that it was coming in!  Wow!  That's cool.  So we stood there watching until I could read the name on the side.  It was the Julie M.  Ok.  So there we are in Saraosta later that same day, standing in the park watching the boats and way out there, amoungst a crowd of even more boats, Tim notices a much larger than usual craft.  He pointed it out to me and said, "I think that's the same boat we saw earlier today"  We watched as it slowly made it's way into Bay Front Harbor and there it was on the side, the Julie M once again!  How cool was that!  We watched it until it docked. Man I'm glad I wasn't piloting that thing. It was enormous!

And of course there were the  views.  It's hard to go wrong with those.

Anyhoo, that was our Walk in the Park this past weekend!  Thanks for coming along ;)