North Florida - the vacation paradise

Rosemary Beach, Seaside, Seacrest Beach, ... the names already sound really charming but that's literally also how the cute little beach towns are. Its definitely the perfect place to spend the 4th of July, Independence Day, with the whole family. 

We stayed in a village full of vacation houses of all kinds of sizes, but in general I would say the prices for the area between Panama City and Destin are relatively expensive. Most of the villages are gated and not open for the public which makes it hard to go to another beach than yours. 

I literally fell in love with the beauty and the peace of these cities, they were completely trash free and seemed just perfect to get a rest from the daily life stress. 

Most people spent the time at the beach or at a community pool which was great to calm down, the ocean is usually pretty clear and the sand is extremely white, you feel like you're in paradise except from the mass of people which had one umbrella next to the other. You need to walk a little bit but then you find deserted spots. Unfortunately you can't really go for a shell walk, because there are normally only a couple or none. 

Rosemary Beach offers a couple of good restaurants and little boutiques where you can find unique pieces to wear. Basically everybody is also wearing a "rosemary beach" shirt which is a typical american thing to show everybody where you were in vacation.

Its super hot in the summers in Florida, so the only way to go out on a walk or on a bike ride is after 7pm, at least you can see an incredible and breathtaking sunset at the beach then which ended up to be my everyday routine. 

To say something about special 4th of July events: rosemary beach organises a really cool and fun family biking parade, first you decorate your bike with American flags and colours and then you make a tour trough the city and you end up at food trucks where you get a typical American flavoured snow cone. At Seacrest beach and all the others they set off fireworks from boats in the ocean which is absolutely beautiful, even though my host kids didn't like the volume of it xD. 

The street which connects all the cities is called 30A, which is a wonderful route to ride your bike, you can stop to see beautiful landscapes, bridges and cute houses. For me the perfect stop on the ride was an restaurant and concert area called @bigchill which had a lot of cute bars, coffee shops and in the evening also some live music. 

Every Sunday rosemary beach hosts a farmers market where you can buy local food and arts and crafts. We ate delicious macarons and bougth some cookies which you can paint yourself. Perfect way to keep the kids busy! The peaches are also really yummy. Close by is another place where you can listen to live music in the evening and an sweet ice cream shop named @thesweetpeddleron30A. But my absolut must-eat on a Florida summer vacation is "Key Lime Pie", we just both it at "public", a grocery chain in Florida xD

Don't forget to spend at least one day doing an ocean activity, we just went on a 2 hours boat ride to see some dolphins in Panama City, which was a very special event for me, even tho the boat was way to crowded @captinandersonmarina.

Last tip for food: go to the @oldfishhouse for extremely good seafood and a beautiful and with love created restaurant, it also is very family-friendly, it has some play areas for them and a little pier which is the perfect spot for special souvenir photos. In this restaurant I got my first "oyster shooter".

All I can say: I totally enjoyed visiting that part of Florida, but the 4th of July week is really family-related and I am partly happy to be back and have a more calm and chilled life. Despite that I am very glad to had the chance to experience this great holiday, even tho I thought its gonna be way more party and drinking than it was.