If you’re a longtime Candie Travels reader, you’ll know that one of our favorite (and most frequent) vacation destinations is the beach region in the Florida panhandle known as 30A. Seaside in particular holds a special place in our hearts as we have been traveling there since our first dating anniversary (almost 7 years ago!). Over the years, we’ve visited many times and although we usually stay in Seaside, we’ve also stayed in some of the other local beaches including Grayton Beach, Rosemary Beach, and Seagrove. To read about some of our past trips and favorite activities, you can access all past posts from my Florida page.

For our 5th wedding anniversary, which coincided with Easter weekend, we decided to stay in Seagrove, which is one of the neighboring towns to Seaside. We found an Airstream to rent through Airbnb and thought it would be a fun and memorable way to celebrate our anniversary milestone. The property included access to a pool and free beach cruisers. The host also offers paddleboards for an additional fee and can help you arrange other special activities like a beach bonfire.

After we arrived at our Airbnb rental on Saturday morning, we biked to Seaside for a delicious lunch of tacos and guacamole at Bud and Alley’s Taco Bar. The Taco Bar is the perfect place for a quick beach lunch. You order from the bar and can eat at tables just steps away from the beach. We set up camp at the beach for a couple of hours, where we relaxed to the sound of waves crashing and walked along the sandy white shore. After we had enough sun for the day, we walked across the street to peruse the many shops in Seaside. We stopped at SunDog Books, a famous local bookstore that has been around for 30 years, and Seaside Style, the official lifestyle brand of the town, which offers clothing for adults and children, accessories, books, toys, and pet items. We also picked up snacks at Modica Market, the go-to local grocery store. Modica Market offers gourmet grocery items like wine, craft beer, cheese, ice cream (try the Southern Craft Creamery-it’s some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had), and to-go meals. You may recognize the market, or at least the owners, from scenes in the movie The Truman Show, which was filmed in Seaside!

For dinner, we drove to George’s at Alys Beach for a romantic al fresco dinner while watching the sunset. George’s uses locally sourced, organic ingredients in its dishes, both in its menu of lighter “spa-inspired” dishes and its more traditional beach menu of fried seafood baskets. We shared crab legs, fish and shrimp dinners, and a decadent chocolate dessert in the courtyard outside the charming cottage. George’s also has a viewing deck where you can watch the sunset over the stunning white architecture of Alys Beach. After dinner, we walked off our delicious meal around the town of Rosemary Beach before turning in for the evening.

The next morning, we picked up a breakfast of egg sandwiches and donuts at Donut Hut before celebrating Easter by attending a service at the Seaside Interfaith Chapel. It was a lovely hour of music and an Easter message inside the bright airy interior and clean lines of the beautiful chapel. The building has recently been designated a National Historic Site for its impressive architecture.

After checking out of the Airstream, we returned to the beach to enjoy a few more hours of sun and shared a late lunch of smoked fish dip and sweet potato fries at Bud and Alley’s. If you have read my previous posts, you’ll notice that we always get the smoked fish dip at Bud and Alley’s. The hearty helping of smoked fish dip served with crunchy lavosh crackers is our favorite dish and the setting can’t be beat! The views of the coastline from the rooftop bar are the best around. To cap off the weekend, we walked around Seaside to admire the many beautiful homes before driving home.

We are heading back to the 30A area this weekend with some friends so I’ll be sure to have even more recommendations soon! I hope you enjoy this beautiful spring weekend!