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By Rachel Devine, Sunday Times Scotland, 25 March 2007
Preserved in rambling splendour, Anna Maria Island is a taste of old Florida, before the beach fronts were all turned into condos, writes Rachel Devine.
Everybody is familiar with the fast-paced glitz and glamour of Florida – the dazzling South Beach hotels, Miami’s celebrity-studded nightlife and larger-than-life amusement parks are the modern face of the Sunshine State.
But away from the urban sprawl, the coastal freeways and crowded beaches is another side to Florida, the easily over-looked places that allow a glimpse of what it was like before the bulldozers moved in. Most are off the main tourist drag, but if you want more than all-you-can-eat breakfast followed by a stomach-churning roller-coaster ride, it is worth the extra effort.
Take Anna Maria Island: A seven-mile strip of paradise in the Gulf of Mexico south of Tampa Bay, it is one of a string of islands extending towards the Florida Keys. Life is good here and the locals know it. Those who call it home have escaped the relentless march of modernisation. As anybody who has ever read a Carl Hiaasen novel will be aware, his beef is that most beautiful parts of Florida were razed long ago to make space for beach-front condo developments.
While half of the original Everglades, the subtropical marsh lands in the south of the state, has been lost to agriculture and housing, Anna Maria Island is hanging in there in some style. It was uninhabited until the late 19th century and has remained virtually untouched – by Florida standards – ever since. George Emerson Bean staked his claim here in 1892 and built much of what still stands today in the early 1900s.
Cortez Bridge, the principal link to the mainland via state road 684, was a rickety wooden stricture until the late 1950s. Even today, many visitors prefer to arrive by boat, but there are now two other bridges, one of which connects Anna Maria to the neighbouring island of Longboat Key. So Anna Maria ambles along with a quiet sense of social and cultural superiority, bolstered by a standard of living essentially unattainable without access to the balmy west Florida temperatures, sugar-white beaches and shimmering blue ocean. Strict building regulations mean it will forever remain in its rambling splendour, threatened only by the odd hurricane and increasing tourist traffic.
The best way to explore the island is on foot, although a free trolley service whisks the less mobile, or just plain lazy, from one end to the other in no time. A grid system divides the island into residential and hotel buildings along the beach, with rows of souvenir and surfwear shops in between.
Sand is never more than a five-minute walk away. Bradenton and Coquina beaches on the island’s southern tip offer idyllic repose. Manatee County and Holmes beaches hum pleasantly with activity. The Roser Memorial Community Church, built by Charles Roser, the creator of the Fig Newton biscuit, stands close to Bean’s original homestead, and is typical of the quaint picket-fence architecture that has made Anna Maria a popular Hollywood location. Parts of the George Clooney-vehicle A Perfect Storm and Out of Time, starring Denzel Washington, were filmed here. Like all the best paradises, there is little to do but eat, drink and sunbathe. Florida rightly considers itself sophisticated in its culinary tastes. Creole and Cajun influences are prevalent in the north; south Florida and Miami follow Cuban and Caribbean traditions.
Anna Maria dips into the best of both, but the focus is on seafood. Florida’s waters produce some of the best shrimp in the world, and the grouper, red snapper, mullet and blue crab are exemplary, too. But a true seafood connoisseur will want to coincide their trip with the stone-crab season. Stone crabs are harvested for their claws and then thrown back into the water alive. It’s not as horribly cruel as it sounds – they grow back after 18 months.
At the end of Cortez Road, on Bradenton beach, Ed Chile’s Beach House is a picturesque vantage point from which to watch the sun go down. Chiles, the son of the colourful former Florida governor Lawton Chiles, owns several restaurants in the area, but this is his best. Chase a bowl of tender calamari with a plate of Gulf Coast crab cakes, washed down with the local beer.
You must get down to the beach after dinner to appreciate the awesome sight of a Florida sunset. Meanwhile, the best way to see the island from all directions is a boat trip with one of the local charter companies. From the ocean waves, you can admire a small patch of old-style Florida without any 21st-century clamour getting in the way.
Details: British Airways (0870 850 9850. www.ba.com) has flights to Tampa from Glasgow from £477. For more information about Anna Maria and the Gulf Islands visit www.sarasotaandfloridasgulfislands.co.uk.
Tortuga Inn on Anna Maria Island (00 1 941 778 6611, tortugain.com) has rooms from £75 a night per person.
The Beach House Restaurant, 200 N Gulf Drive, Bradenton Beach, 779 2222, www.beachhouse-restaurant.com.
For boat rides, bird watching, sunset tours and shelling trips, try Captain Kim’s charters, 920 3307, www.kimscharters.com.
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