When I was in college, Panama City Beach was *the* place to go. We didn’t act crazy, but we were poor college students and would stick six or seven or eight of us girls in a hotel room on weekends so we could afford to just go and soak up the sun and splash around and act silly and neverrrr tell boys the truth about what hotel we were staying at, because weirdos. Remember when MTV would go to PCB and Daytona and the islands to do Spring Break shows in the 90s and it was all Hawaiian Tropic and Body Glove and crunch socks with white Reeboks and Colin Quinn completely out of his mind (and off-script)? Yeah. What I remember is that no one could afford PCB on SB because someone at least 24 had to sign for the room with a credit card and the rooms were — I don’t know — 5x what they were the rest of the summer, and none of our parents were going to do that. So my SB were always less beach and more catching rays via plastic-lounger-in-the-backyard so it at least *looked* like my vacay game was strong.
Aaaaahhhh college.
Now that we have kids, we’re thinking about where we can go that it’s all family and fun. Usually we like to stay right on the beach, but I noticed that the Sheraton Bay Point Resort was crazy inexpensive (and had just had a $30M renovation as it was rebranded to a SPG property) so we decided to give it a go. It also has a spa, a Nicklaus Design golf course (golfboards?), and tennis courts.
The hotel is right on St. Andrew’s Bay, so while we weren’t watching the Gulf’s waves roll in, we flipflopped over a long boardwalk past the hotel’s waterfront bar/grill and further to another little private island where we played for a long time in shallow water that went out for a long distance. We also saw more hermit crabs than ever. It was super fun (sorry I didn’t take my phone out there for pics!). And there were a couple of pools closer to the hotel that we really enjoyed as well. Just a great experience.
Our room:
This is the view from one of the bridges driving out. Fab:
For supper, we tried Firefly, which is in a rather boring-looking shopping center. Don’t let that keep you from making a reservation. We waited here for a couple of minutes while our OpenTable res opened up:
and then were seated in the main dining room which has this large faux light-bedecked tree in the middle, which was actually more charming than it looks here:
Every single thing was delicious. The boys were happy with their kids menu, and we all shared bites of this stuffed filet, and the fish below too:
Just delicious, delicious, delicious. We will come here again next time as well.
They’re like, “mom, can we look all whatever next to this tree and you take our picture?” — yes, lovebugs!