Florida Beaches, Football, and Nightlife

My parents live in Florida so I head down there a few times a year - usually for Christmas and the summer. The beaches are excellent as you’d expect but there are a ton of other things to do that most of my friends and other students I meet don’t know about so I figured I’d write up a list.

Two Beaches

I spend the summer in Stuart Florida, which is just north of Palm Beach. Stuart is known for great fishing, they call it the sailfish capital of the world. There are also a ton of beaches. My two favorite beaches are Stuart Beach and Jensen Beach both on the Atlantic Ocean. Stuart Beach has decent waves for surfing and basketball courts where you can get into a pickup game. And they have showers and a concession stand. Jensen Beach is a little north of Stuart Beach. It has really great sand and blue water.

The Florida Keys

If you have never been snorkeling you have to try it out when you are in Florida. Down in Key Largo is John Pennekamp State Park - and underwater park with amazing reefs. They have snorkeling trips every day and provide all the gear you need. The water is crystal clear and you can see tropical fish, turtles, and live coral. Florida has a ton of state parks and many of them are right on the ocean. For me it’s about a three hour drive from Stuart down to Key Largo.

For nightlife in the Keys the best spot is Key West. A few of the bars I went to were Sloppy Joes Bar, Turtle Crawls (which has good food), Jimmy Buffets Margaritaville, and the Green Parrot Bar. If you go to Key West try out parasailing, it’s a great way to get a view of both the ocean and Gulf of Mexico at the same time. Skip this if you have a fear of heights.

The Stuart area (also known as the Treasure Coast) has virtually no nightlife so if you really want to go out partying you have to go out of town. It’s a bit of a drive but on my last trip during thanksgiving I went up to Gainesville to see a few friends. Gainesville is home to the University of Florida.

College Football in Florida

Gainesville is a real college town where the students are a huge chunk of the population. There are a lot of great clubs. We happened to be in town for the annual Florida Gators versus Florida State Seminoles football game. These two colleges play each other every year - the last game of the year - right around thanksgiving and it’s a serious rivalry. The stadium at the University of Florida is call “the swamp” and is huge. The crowd really gets into the game - college football is serious business in Florida.

After the game the town really parties. The bars and restaurants are booming with students and thousands of alumni that come into town for the game. If you are going to visit Gainesville during a football game then you have to plan way ahead. The town literally fills up and the hotels get booked. And the hotel prices go way up on football weekends.

Gainesville is about an hour from the beach - the closest beach is St. Augustine, which has really white sand and good waves. And downtown St Augustine is pretty cool. You can see a fort built by the Spanish in 1672 and St Augustine is the oldest city in the United States so there are a lot of landmarks.