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Sand Cliffs Condominiums on the panhandle of Florida
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Hello everyone!
As many of you know (or those who follow me on Instagram or Facebook), I recently went on a short weekend getaway to the panhandle of Florida. Personally, I think the gulf coast is one of the most gorgeous places and beaches on earth, but that might just be my personal opinion. My girlfriends, Amelia, Liz, Milan, and Carter, and I all had a great time relaxing on the white sandy beaches along the gulf.
We all hadn't seen each other in quite some time, so when we first arrived, it was loud, crazy, and lots of laughing and jumping.. yes, jumping! Each of the girls ended up bringing gifts for everyone and we had the best time opening them one by one and we just couldn't contain our excitement (I am sure the downstairs occupants were not very pleased).
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| The gifts that I got! Obviously, my best friends know I love the color pink! |
The first night, we decided to just chill and catch up over wine. This ended up being a nightly ritual for us. We would shower, pour some wine, and sit on the balcony overlooking the ocean while listening to music.
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Wine nights!
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After visiting with each other for a little while, we decided to venture into Seacrest, FL to a cute pizza place called Angelina's Pizza. If you are ever in the Seacrest area, I highly suggest this pizza place. It is a cute little white building that is very quaint and offeres delicious food! They also have fantastic decor, inside. I had to take a picture of the amazing paintings that were lining the walls.
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| Cute decor inside Angelina's. |
We ended up really lucking out with the weather! Our first beach day, we woke up to overcast skies and weather radars that looked like rain for days. We decided to just try our luck and go to the beach as long as we could until it started raining. Boy, did we luck out! We ended up staying on the beach for the entire afternoon! It was actually the perfect weather because the overcast skies made the temperature bearable and we could comfortably lay on the ocean. Amelia bought all of us floats to float in the ocean, so the first hour of our beach day was spent blowing up the floats! After successfully blowing up the pink and green floats, we decided the waters called for us to float! We enjoyed doing this everyday and spent a great deal of time in the ocean relaxing, floating, talking, and soaking up the Florida sunshine!
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| With the cute cups that Liz bought all of us! Perfect for our beach drinks! |
One of our friends, Carter, joined us for the fun on Thursday afternoon so we decided to spend the rest of the day at the pool!
That night, we decided it would be fun to get dressed up and go out to dinner so we ventured to Aqua Coastal Sushi in Rosemary Beach. Rosemary Beach is a newer development on the panhandle, and is gorgeous! The sushi place was very delicious and we had a great time. The highlight of our meal was Liz's "hot rock." Liz ordered raw beef that you could cook yourself on a hot rock. Amelia and I were very fascinated with this rock, and decided to try and cook some of our raw sushi on it. It was a success and delish!
After dinner, we decided to head to Sandestin to Baytowne Wharf and hang out there for a little while. Little did we know what fun we would have! We decided to hang out at a bar/restaurant called Hammerheads and sat outside on the deck listening to the live band. Before we knew it, many of the waiters started to come over and being us silly girls, we began to have a lot of fun with them! One of the waiters, Stefon, was our favorite and he began to introduce us to the bartenders who were nice enough to make us free drinks! It ended up being such a fun night!
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| Just being silly us! |
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| Amelia and Stefon |
Friday was one a super sunny day! It was the perfect beach day, and the waters were CRYSTAL CLEAR. They were beautiful, so we spend a majority of our time in the water that afternoon.
That evening, us girls wanted to check out all of the shopping in Destin. Silver Sands is a fabulous outlet mall and the Destin Commons is a great outdoor mall. Sadly (not for our wallets) the shopping seemed a little between the seasons and was a bust! We still enjoyed walking around the malls, and it was a gorgeous night. We ended the night with delicious seafood at Bayou Bill's Crab House. Amelia was SUPER happy to indulge in her all time favorite crab legs!
Our last beach day (sad!!) was also a great day! We got a little too much sun the day before, so it was a little relief to see some clouds on this day. We enjoyed relaxing, chatting, and floating. To our surprise, we were greeted by around 15 dolphins that were super close to the shore. We felt like we were at SeaWorld when the dolphins started to jump up and do flips in the air! All of us girls were tired and wanted to chill out during the night, so we decided to order in a pizza, drink wine on the balcony, and go on the sunset to watch the gorgeous sunset. On the way down to the beach to watch the sunset we saw a beautiful rainbow!
Yes, I will admit it, I am a sunset freak! I seriously love sunsets. Something about them causes me to slip into a deep state of relaxation and when I watch one, I feel like all is right in the world. I don't know if there is anything better than watching a beach sunset with great friends or loved ones. I could do this every night until the day I die, and be VERY happy.
After watching the sunset, Amelia, Milan, and myself.. being the really silly girls that we are decided we needed to go for a night swim! We jumped in the pool with our clothes on and then decided that Liz should take our picture of us jumping in the pool. Upon looking at the pictures, our favorite thing was the crowd of people that was staring at us jumping into the pool and we had NO CLUE.
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Please notice the crowd of people staring at us!
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This was one of my favorite vacations, and I can't wait to do it again next year (we are making this a yearly tradition, right?!) Until next year!
Thanks for reading, and please leave a comment below and let me know your favorite vacation spots or your favorite vacation that you have taken this summer!
Always remember to sparkle,
Ally
