The Absolute Best and Worst Florida Has to Offer

Florida is a wonderful, weird, fun, frightening, delightful, unpredictable and entirely unique place to live! And similar to every one of the 11 different states I’ve lived in over the course of my life, it has its “goods and bads”. After three and a half years of living in Florida, here’s my take on the absolute best and worst Florida has to offer!

Laurie and I decided to retire to Florida with eyes wide open. We had both spent time down here (Laurie a lot more time than me), so we knew what we were getting into. For us, the pros of living in Florida far outweighed the cons, at least as far as we understood them at the time!

After a few years living here, we are absolutely certain we made the right decision to retire to a place that millions of people view as the ultimate vacation destination. Still, we have been a bit surprised, in both positive and negative ways, with some of our experiences here. So, for those of you who might be thinking of retiring here yourselves (or just vacationing here!), let me help you out a bit by sharing my thoughts on the absolute best and worst Florida has to offer!

BEST: The People!

Almost everyone we run across here, including all of our neighbors, are absolutely thrilled to be living in Florida. Everyone ended up here for slightly different reasons, but regardless, Florida residents are generally a happy bunch of folks that love living here. Much happier as a group than what we found living in the DC-metro area. I mean, we DO all live in a place that many people from all over the world pay thousands of dollars to visit each year for vacations and getaways. And that means we are surrounded by kind, fun, loving, pleasant, upbeat, and simply wonderful friends and neighbors who you can count on to be there for you if you ever need anything. Even those who are still working have a sunny outlook on life, most of whom work from home anyway. And sure, there are parts of Florida (usually further inland away from the coasts) that feel like a scene from the movie Deliverance when you are driving through and that have their fair share of somewhat “feral” human beings, but you have to search to find them! Best to just stay near the more populated coastal communities to avoid any trouble!

Hanging out with our friends at the Suncoast Food and Wine Festival

WORST: The Hurricanes

Hurricanes suck. They take their toll in many different ways – from the destruction they cause from the water (storm surge and rain) and the winds, to the stress they cause as you wait and watch to see whether each storm will hit or miss you, along with the stress of actually having to ride out a violent hurricane. None of that is remotely fun. Since we moved here 3 ½ years ago, we have been affected by four hurricanes (Ian, Debby, Helene, and Milton) and three tropical storms. That’s a lot of hurricanes and tropical storms over a short period of time, considerably more than the historical average for the Sarasota area, and something that has taken us by surprise and not in a good way. It might well be that this is the new normal due to climate change, but I’ll keeping hoping it’s just an anomaly and the next few years will be hurricane free!

Obliterated community fence after Milton

BEST: The Sunsets

Nothing beats a Florida sunset! Laurie and I often plan our dinners, happy hours, get togethers with friends, and other general life activities around the sunsets. And best of all, we don’t have to hit the beach to enjoy them (although the sunsets at the beach ARE spectacular)! As fate would have it, our outdoor lanai (complete with outdoor kitchen, covered living room, pool and pool deck, and spa) faces west, so every evening we have the opportunity to take a few steps and watch the beautiful sunset right from our lanai. Mostly we enjoy a cocktail together or with family and friends, but we also love eating al fresco and watching the sunset as we dine. It has turned out to be one of the greatest simple pleasures in life that we never really experienced much until we moved down here, and we intend to never take it for granted!

A typical sunset from our lanai

WORST: The Politics

Before I get started on this one, let me make one thing perfectly clear – I absolutely abhor the views of partisans on both ends of the political spectrum. That includes the far-right MAGA freaks who are obsessed with forcing their so-called morality on me, as well as the far-left radical progressives who are obsessed with trying to make me feel guilty for actually loving this country regardless of its flaws. It turns out that Florida is a deep red state right now, and Sarasota and neighboring counties are deep red as well. Which means we have to put up with ridiculous things like book banning, anti-vaccine misinformation, anti-WOKE anything (even though most of those who are anti-WOKE don’t even know what WOKE means, …), and other extreme positions on mostly social issues that should be none of the state government’s business. We actually miss living in a purple state (which Virginia was for a good part of the time we lived there), where moderation tended to win the day on most issues once all the partisan wrangling was finished and compromise prevailed. Here's hoping that Florida and Sarasota goes purple somewhere down the line (but I’m not holding my breath!).

Our far-right governor in his white boots – not a fan (of the governor OR the boots!)

BEST: The Beaches

When Laurie and I were considering different places to live in Florida, we were open to a wide range of possibilities, but we had one hard criteria – we wanted to live near a beach. That meant close enough that we could be there in about 35-40 minutes or less, but far enough so we were out of any flood zones and any danger from storm surge caused by hurricanes. We settled in Lakewood Ranch, which is 11 miles inland as the crow flies from the local beaches, and about 16 miles on the roads from all the famous beaches nearby – Lido Key Beach, Siesta Key Beach, Coquina Beach, Anna Maria Island Beach, and Venice beach a bit further to the south. We love them all and usually frequent them either in the winter during the day when things are cooler, or in the evening during the summer enjoying cocktails on the beach while watching the sunset. All of these beaches are pristine and stunning, with plenty of room for the crowds and easy parking options as well. Take a swim in the warm gulf waters, hunt for seashells, enjoy a morning walk on the beach, work on your tan for a few hours, and of course, watch the sunset while sipping some wine – you can do it all and more at these wonderful Florida beaches!

Great friends and neighbors enjoying a sunset together at Siesta Key Beach

WORST: The Wine

It’s difficult to find a worse place to grow grapes than Florida. I can’t tell you how much I absolutely LOVED living less than an hour from Virginia wine country at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Laurie and I would go there frequently to visit different wineries and enjoy afternoons out on the winery lawns eating lunch and sipping fantastic wines. We had over 100 wineries near us in northern Virginia so there were plenty to explore and enjoy! Then, we moved to Florida, which has 35 wineries in the ENTIRE state. And none of them are any good. If they sell grape-based wine, it’s usually made with the Muscadet grape, the only one that can survive (notice I didn’t say “thrive”!) in Florida. But most of the wine made here is fruit wine – cloyingly sweet wines that taste more like Gatorade than wine. So, I live in a wine wasteland down here. On the plus side, there are plenty of excellent high-end wine shops that have great selections of hard-to-find, small production wines, so never fear – our wine cellar remains stocked full (albeit with about a quarter of the number of wines we stored at home while we were living in Virginia)! Bottom line – I think I’ll survive even though it’s a hardship!

Bunker Hill Winery, located about 30 minutes from us – and yes, that IS a Quonset hut!

Next week I’ll finish my list of the absolute best and worst that Florida has to offer!