Shore Bell Seyle Realty
Lunch over, up Carter Mountain we went. The apples were great, as usual. We normally buy a bushel each of four different varieties, typically Stayman Winesap, York, Fugi and Pink Lady, so that we can mix them together and give them as little “happy-apple-harvest” gifties to friends and family. A Pink Lady is an especially pretty apple, a very pale green with a large blush of deep pink on the side, quite crisp and slightly tart, one of my favorite apples, both a good eating and a good pie apple. But for applesauce, I think you just can’t beat the combination of the Stayman and York varieties with a few Fugi and Macintosh thrown in for good measure. At our house we love applesauce, unsweetened, chunky, flavorful, lightly laced with cinnamon, completely delicious with chicken or pork, and, I might add, so good for you. It’s hard to tolerate what passes for applesauce in the supermarket, thin, grainy, absolutely flavorless– must be made with mealy red delicious, the worst apple ever for flavor. But a big pot of three or four types of sweet-tart Carter Mountain apples, slowly simmered with a little apple cider, mashed carefully to retain some chunks (but not too many), gently flavored with cinnamon and perhaps a tiny dash of clove at the very end — now that’s an applesauce that we will drive 3 hours to get really fresh apples to make ! ( By the way, applesauce freezes very well, pull it out, defrost and it tastes almost as great as the day it was simmered off in the big apple kettle.) So we got some great apples, newly picked that morning, we got the fresh-pressed apple cider, delicious either hot and mulled or icy cold, as well as a dozen pre-packaged cider donuts. All in all, we had a great day. But ….. for Apple Trek 2012, I think we will make a point to go before Halloween so we can enjoy all the extras too — the yelling kids, the noisy hayrides, the bluegrass band twanging away and the aromas of apple pies newly baked, all the many features of the October Apple Festival atop Charlottesville’s Carter Mountain.
Tags: Apple Festival in Charlottesville VA, Blue Heron Realty Co. Machipongo and Cape Charles, Carter Mountain Apple Orchard, Charlottesville Virginia, Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, Eastern Shore of Virginia, fall foliage, Halloween, life on Virginia's Eastern Shore, Virginia Apples, Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains, week-end trips from Eastern Shore Virginia
Few of us would associate the word “writers” with Florida. “Sun,” certainly. “Beaches,” for sure. “Attractions,” without a doubt. But “writers?”
It may surprise you, then, to learn that Florida writers have won more than 50 Pulitzer Prizes and other national awards.
Writers have always been drawn to Florida, perhaps because it’s a geographical last frontier, where the U.S. melts into a Caribbean collage of exotic cultures and islands. Perhaps because of the juxtaposition of diverse cultures, lifestyles and peoples. Perhaps by the melding of sun, sky and water. Or perhaps by the colors—flaming tropical hues splashed over flat horizons that never seem to be reached.
Maybe it’s the swaying sawgrass, tropical tree stands and shimmering waterways. Or maybe it’s the air—heavy and hard and sometimes-foreboding in summer, cool and sweet and soul-soothing in winter.
“And let’s not kid ourselves,” says well-known critic and writer Chauncey Mabe, a Fort Lauderdale resident. “They’re also drawn here by the same things that draw everyone else here: sunshine and beaches. But, perhaps due to the light, air and exotic ambience of the place, once writers start working here, they produce great books.”
The list of notable writers who have called Florida home includes Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, Peter Matthiessen, John James Audubon, Wallace Stevens, John Dos Passos, Elizabeth Bishop, Truman Capote, Robert Frost, Robin Cook, Robert Ludlum, Randy Wayne White, CarlHiaasen, John D. MacDonald, Stephen Crane, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Jack Kerouac…among others.
“People are often surprised to hear it,” Mabe says. “But other than perhaps New York and California, no state has a richer and more distinctive literary history than Florida.”
Happily for planners, much of this literary history intersects with the state’s top meeting places.
THE NORTHEAST
Jacksonville is Florida’s largest city and the dominant force in the area, but the northeast coastline is also dotted with appealing, smaller beachside communities as well as famous offshore destinations, including Amelia Island to Jacksonville’s north. Historic St. Augustine lies to the south, and beyond that, Palm Coast and Daytona Beach. Jacksonville may be a city ready to do business but it has a creative side as well, exemplified by writers such as James Weldon Johnson, one of America’s great early African-American authors, and Stephen Crane, best known for The Red Badge of Courage.
Johnson, who was born in Jacksonville, was a noted poet and songwriter. His “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a testament to the will to prevail, is still regarded as an anthem by some in the African-American community.
While living here in the 1890s, Stephen Crane managed to survive the sinking of a passenger boat on which he was traveling, an event he memorialized in his short story “The Open Boat.” At 27, he took up with an enterprising young Jacksonville businesswoman named Cora, madam of Jacksonville’s most famous “bawdy” house.
JACKSONVILLE & THE NORTHEAST COAST
Jacksonville is an insurance and health-care capital, born and raised on the banks of the St. Johns River. The Jacksonville area has 1.3 million sq. ft. of meeting space and 18,000 hotel rooms.
“We’re very much a city of neighborhoods, each with its own distinct feel,” says Katie Kurycki, senior marketing manager of Visit Jacksonville, the city’s tourism/meetings marketing arm. “When you tie that in with our riverside setting, [it's clear] we can offer a lot of options to meeting planners.”
The Prime F. Osborn III Convention Center, once the city’s grand railroad station, has 156,184 sq. ft. of indoor meeting space. Also downtown is the Hyatt Regency Jacksonville Riverfront, with 966 guest rooms and 110,000 sq. ft. of space. And St. Augustine’s Renaissance World Golf Village Resort—a mouthful to say but a Four-Diamond place to stay—just completed renovations to its 301 guest rooms and 101,000 sq. ft.
For a different type of venue, consider The Ribault Club, where Jacksonville’s rich and famous went to imbibe on the sly during Prohibition. Or, for something outside the city center, the Hammock Beach Resort offers 320 rooms and 15,000 sq. ft. of indoor space, as well as about 80,000 sq. ft. of outdoor space, about an hour south of “Jax” in Palm Coast.
THE GOLD COAST
Southeastern Florida, home to Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Key West, got its nickname because of frequent shipwrecks—and buried treasure—in the early days. Now, though, the Gold Coast connotes international hot spots splattered over a landscape of beaches and aquamarine bays, tipped by the coral islands of the Florida Keys.
It also connotes literary legends, including writers like Russell Banks, author of books such as Continental Drift and Affliction; Carl Hiaasen, a former Miami Herald reporter; crime-writer Edna Buchanan (ditto); and Deborah Sharp, formerly of USA Today and author of the popular Mace Bauer detective series.
Key West, however, looms largest in terms of literary luminaries. Ernest Hemingway received a Spanish Colonial home on Whitehead Street as a wedding gift in 1931 and lived there until 1939. It’s where he produced some of his greatest works, among them Death in the Afternoon, Green Hills of Africa, To Have and Have Not, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and For Whom the Bell Tolls.
The house is filled with Hemingway-bilia: hunting trophies from Africa, photos from fishing and hunting trips, porcelain statues from Spain and Africa, ceremonial masks from the Caribbean, and the dark Spanish furniture that he and Pauline (wife No. 3) loved. Standing in Hemingway’s study, with his old Royal typewriter on his desk, you can almost feel his presence.
As you walk the grounds, you’ll run into the descendants of Hemingway’s six-toed cats, now numbering more than 40. In the pool area, look for a penny embedded in the concrete. As the story goes, the writer returned from overseas to find that Pauline had spent $20,000 to build the pool. In a fit of anger, Hemingway threw the coin into the still-wet cement, yelling, “Here, why don’t you take my last penny!”
Playwright Tennessee Williams, who wrote A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Glass Menagerie, bought the house at 1431 Duncan Street in 1949. (It didn’t start out at 1431 Duncan Street, however. He had it floated over from Cuba on a raft.)
Williams died in New York in 1983, leaving his Key West house (and everything else) to a mysterious woman of rather unsavory reputation. The home, for which Williams paid $27,000, was purchased in 2000 for $1.2 million.
MIAMI
Miami’s a city of 2.5 million and is one of the most experienced meeting hosts in the world. It has hosted Super Bowls, national political conventions and huge international associations. So the meeting professionals here know what they’re doing.
The landmark Miami Beach Convention Center has 502,000 sq. ft. of exhibit space and 127,000 sq. ft. of meeting-room space and the nearby Fontainebleau Resort has 107,000 sq. ft. of space and 1,504 guest rooms. In downtown Miami, the 612-room Hyatt Regency Miami is attached to the Miami Convention Center, which seats 5,000 in its James L. Knight Center. Also downtown is the new JW Marriott Marquis, with 313 rooms and 80,000 sq. ft., the first combination of the prestigious JW Marriott and Marriott Marquis brands.
Miami’s most unusual meeting place, however, is Vizcaya Museum & Gardens, an Italian Renaissance mansion built at the turn of the century by industrialist James Deering, of Deering Tractors fame. You can hold your meetings of up to 300 inside a palace—literally—or outside in the magnificent gardens.
FORT LAUDERDALE
Fort Lauderdale is a sophisticated city with a vibrant cultural life, top-notch restaurants and shopping, historic neighborhoods and a striking, major-league skyline.
Greater Fort Lauderdale offers 34,000 hotel rooms and 2 million sq. ft. of meeting space (40% of which is at The Greater Fort Lauderdale/Broward County Convention Center). The Harbor Beach Marriott Resort & Spa has 650 guest rooms and 40,000 sq. ft. And in the far western suburbs you’ll find the Hyatt Regency Bonaventure Conference Center & Spa, a Four-Diamond property with 501 rooms, 60,000 sq. ft. of indoor/outdoor space and notable golf.
If your meeting is small, The Broward Center for the Performing Arts can host it onstage. And if it’s large, BankAtlantic Center, home of the National Hockey League’s Florida Panthers, offers 20,763 seats.
KEY WEST
“We call ourselves ‘America’s Caribbean,’” says Jack Meier, sales manager for The Monroe County Tourist Development Council, “because we can offer an offshore experience without crossing borders.”
Most of the Keys meeting facilities are in Key West (population 25,000), the funky, laid-back, colorful, vibrant, artistic, historic, live-and-let-live town at the end of America…closer to Cuba than to Miami.
The largest meeting space is the Casa Marina Resort & Beach Club, with 311 guest rooms and 22,600 sq. ft. of space, down the street from its sister property, and fellow member of the Waldorf Astoria family, The Reach, with 150 rooms and 4,706 sq. ft.
You can also meet at an artists’ annex called The Studios of Key West, or at the Florida Keys Eco-Discovery Center, an environmental-studies center and museum.
CENTRAL FLORIDA
The meetings giant in Central Florida is indisputably Orlando, famous for its theme-park resorts where an internationally known mouse and a quidditch-playing young wizard draw millions of visitors annually. But in a small, rather innocuous house in a small, rather innocuous Orlando neighborhood, there once lived a giant of American letters. Jack Kerouac moved to 1418 ½ Clouser Avenue in 1957, while waiting for On the Road to be published. And he apparently put that time to good use…writing The Dharma Bums in just 20 days!
Nearby Eatonville (America’s first African-American incorporated town) was home to author Zora Neale Hurston. From the 1920s until her death in 1960, she illuminated the sorrows and the joys of the people in this tiny community.
ORLANDO
There are 116,000 hotel rooms here. More than 5,000 restaurants. A hundred golf courses. And meeting venues that include the world’s most famous attractions.
The Orange County Convention Center is the second-largest in America, with 2.1 million sq. ft. of exhibit space, 74 meeting rooms and 235 breakout rooms.
Last year saw the opening of the Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek and Waldorf Astoria Orlando, both set in the 482 acres of Bonnet Creek and offering 1,500 guest rooms and 150,000 sq. ft. of meeting space between them. Nearby is the Wyndham Grand Orlando Resort Bonnet Creek with 400 rooms and 25,000 sq. ft., which opened in October. And the famed Peabody Orlando on International Drive recently opened its new tower, giving it a total of 1,641 rooms and 300,000 sq. ft.
Susan Katz is director of corporate events and travel for True Value Company. In February, she had 10,000 attendees at the company’s annual Spring & Rental Market at the city’s convention center.
“We needed 21 hotels,” says Katz. “Needless to say, getting that many people around to that many hotels and to the convention center could be a logistical nightmare. But not for Orlando. It’s a serious meetings destination. They’re used to working with large groups. And it’s a value destination—very important to a company such as ours, with independent owners who have to pay their own way.”
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA
Here, along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, the coastal towns offer a laid-back vibe and the roots of Florida’s literary legacy run deep. Peter Matthiessen is the founder of Paris Review, a National Book Award winner and the author of books such as The Snow Leopard and Killing Mr. Watson, a three-part series based on a real-life Everglades scoundrel who was felled by vigilantes. Matthiessen has lived here in the past, and still visits regularly in winter.
Robin Cook has a residence in Naples. Robert Ludlum lived in this area. And popular contemporary novelist Randy Wayne White (who writes mysteries about shadowy characters in the Everglades) still lives in his native Fort Myers, where he captained fishing vessels before he began writing. Then there’s Doris Reynolds, a longtime resident and author of a popular memoir called When Peacocks Were Roasted and Mullet Was Fried.
NAPLES
“We’re the western gateway to the Everglades and the 10,000 Islands, so we’re sitting atop a great natural wonderland,” says Debi DeBenedetto, CHA, tourism sales and marketing manager for the Naples Marco Island Everglades Convention & Visitors Bureau. “We’re lined with 30 miles of beautiful beaches. And we know how to host a meeting.”
The Naples area has 8,500 hotel rooms and 250,000 sq. ft. of space for meetings. The largest meeting place is the Marco Island Marriott Beach Resort, Golf Club & Spa, with 727 rooms and 56,888 sq. ft. The Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club, with 319 rooms and 22,000 sq. ft., just finished a major renovation. The Inn on Fifth, in the heart of Old Naples, is a Victorian-style inn with excellent small meeting rooms. And when it opens its all-suite addition next November, the inn will have 124 guest rooms and 7,879 sq. ft. of meeting space for events.
Nontraditional meeting venues include the Naples Zoo at Caribbean Gardens, the NGALA Private Reserve and the Naples Botanical Garden. And a company called Adventure Training Concepts, run by former Navy SEALS, offers team-building exercises on tropical islands, ropes courses, helicopters and boats.
Access to Naples is through Southwest Florida International Airport, located midway between Naples and Fort Myers (which is about an hour north).
FORT MYERS
When Col. Abraham Myers established a fort here during the Seminole Wars, he probably never envisioned that a city bearing his name would be attracting business meetings a century-and-a-half later. But today’s Fort Myers, perched on the Caloosahatchee River, is a preferred destination for meetings of up to 500.
“We fill a specific niche,” says Lee Rose, communications manager at the Lee County Visitor & Convention Bureau. “We specialize in smaller meetings and board meetings. We offer a small-town feel amidst spectacular natural beauty. We have some of the best beaches in Florida. And we have eco- and heritage-tourism options that encourage attendees to bring their families.”
There are 12,000 hotel rooms in Fort Myers, and a quarter-million sq. ft. of meeting space. The Fort Myers area boasts two tropical islands—Sanibel and Captiva—each with its own distinct personality. Sanibel is sophisticated yet charming, filled with interesting shops and restaurants, playhouses and bike paths. Captiva is a bit more reminiscent of old Florida, with woods and secluded coves where you can catch spectacular Gulf of Mexico sunsets.
The Harborside Event Center, in downtown Fort Myers, overlooking the Caloosahatchee, has 42,000 sq. ft. of space. Other top venues include the Sanibel Harbour Marriott Resort & Spa, with 347 rooms and 45,000 sq. ft.; the Hyatt Regency Coconut Point Resort & Spa in Bonita Springs, with 454 rooms and 73,000 sq. ft.; and the South Seas Island Resort on Captiva Island, with 465 rooms and 16,500 sq. ft. And a number of hotels here have excellent team-building programs.
Planners can also hold their meetings in the Edison & Ford Winter Estates, the mansions of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, next to each other on the banks of the Caloosahatchee. The two men were great friends, and would often talk the night away in Edison’s lab or Ford’s workshop. Now, planners can hold their meetings in the same rooms in which the world was changed.
Nation’s Restaurant News calls Fort Myers one of “50 Cities That Sizzle.” The aforementioned author Randy Wayne White, who writes the Doc Ford mysteries, has two Doc Ford’s Rum Bar & Grille restaurants here, serving an enticing combination of meats, seafood and splashy tropical drinks.
And the Bubble Room, on Captiva Island, is a multihued, funky wooden building that looks as if it’s been crafted by Dr. Seuss. Here, you’ll be served comfort-food classics by “Bubble Scouts,” and surrounded by thousands of Americana nostalgia pieces, while a Lionel train circles overhead.
THE CENTRAL GULF COAST
Traveling north from Fort Myers along the Gulf coast you’ll come to Sarasota, home to one of America’s most famous (and scary!) authors…Stephen King. John D. McDonald lived here, too, writing the crime novels that turned a disheveled, nerdy detective named Travis McGee into a world-famous phenomenon (Mr. McGee, however, lived across the state, in a Fort Lauderdale houseboat). Evan Hunter, another noted crime writer, also lived in Sarasota.
About 40 miles farther up the coast, St. Petersburg is the home of Dennis Lehane, whose award-winning novels include A Drink Before the War and Mystic River. Michael Connolly, who writes the Bosch mysteries, lives in Tampa.
Also a one-time resident of Tampa is José Martí, more commonly thought of as the great Cuban patriot of the late-1800s. Martí, however, was also an accomplished poet, essayist and
SARASOTA
Sarasota doesn’t compete for the big meetings. And has no desire to.
“Here, you can feel more like a big fish in a small pond,” says Erin Duggan, communications director at the Sarasota Convention & Visitors Bureau. “Even the smallest of meetings matters to us. But it doesn’t hurt, either, that we’ve been called the best beach in America. Or that we have professional ballet, symphony, opera and theater.”
Sarasota has 5,000 hotel rooms and 210,000 total sq. ft. of meeting space, nearly half of which is in the Sarasota-Bradenton International Convention Center, conveniently located next to Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport. Other prime meeting spaces are The Ritz-Carlton, Sarasota with 266 guest rooms and 18,000 sq. ft., the Hyatt Regency Sarasota with 294 rooms and 20,000 sq. ft. and the recently renovated Longboat Key Club & Resort, which has 218 rooms and 12,800 sq. ft.
Dining here is eclectic. Troyer’s Dutch Heritage, run by local Amish and Mennonites, serves classic Amish food and pies. And The Old Salty Dog’s specialty is a deep-fried, beer-battered, damn-the-diet hot dog called…the Salty Dog.
The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art is world-class and offers spectacular indoor and outdoor meeting space. There’s golf all over the place, including a course dedicated by legendary golfer Bobby Jones in 1927. And a company called Sand Lubbers offers imaginative team-building options right on the beach.
“Sometimes you’re lucky enough to find the perfect destination,” says Erin O’Boyle, manager and programs coordinator for the NFL Players Association. “And we found it in Sarasota. We had 130 attendees—all newly drafted rookies—on very short notice for a meeting at The Ritz-Carlton. But Sarasota pulled it off beautifully.”
The city, she adds, was convenient—easy to get to and easy to get around. She noted that management wanted to hold the meeting in a place not considered “wild,” but to which rookie players would still want to come.
“We were delighted with Sarasota,” O’Boyle says. “They went out of their way to make the meetings run like clockwork…I wouldn’t hesitate to go back!”
TAMPA BAY
“We like to think we have the perfect business environment, in a resort-like setting,” says Norwood Smith, vice president of sales for Tampa Bay & Company, the city’s CVB. “Tampa International Airport is only 15 minutes from downtown. And the Tampa Convention Center’s a stunning waterfront facility that’s hosting next year’s Republican National Convention.”
Tampa is also home, of course, to Busch Gardens, one of America’s best-loved amusement parks and an off-site option for events.
The Tampa Convention Center has more than 350,000 sq. ft. of meeting and exhibition space and 2,000 hotel rooms within walking distance. And the Bay Area has nearly 3 million sq. ft. of space in all, as well as 23,000 hotel rooms.
Major meeting hotels include the Tampa Marriott Waterside Hotel & Marina, with 719 rooms and 50,000 sq. ft. of recently renovated meeting space, and the Hyatt Regency Tampa, also recently renovated, with 521 rooms and 30,000 sq. ft. In February, they’ll be joined by the new Center for Advanced Medical Learning & Simulation. This will be one of the most impressive medical-industry meeting places in America, with 90,000 sq. ft. And it will be available for corporate and association meetings.
The colorful Ybor City neighborhood was home to one of the first Cuban settlements in Tampa. Ybor has been restored to its original 1890s look, with brick sidewalks, gas-lit street lamps and red-brick buildings that now house attractive shops and restaurants. You can hold your meeting in authentically restored social clubs such as The Cuban Club (which can hold up to 1,600 attendees) or The Italian Club (which can accommodate up to 250 for a sit-down meal). Columbia Restaurant is known to serve some of the best Cuban/Spanish food in America, in an ambience reminiscent of Old Havana.
THE PANHANDLE
The pace may be slower on the Emerald Coast, named for the deeply saturated green-blue waters rolling onto flour-white beaches, and the population smaller, but the literary arts scene is as healthy as can be.
A popular writer named Julia Schuster lived here until a few years ago, authoring a well-received novel called Flowers for Elvis, as well as award-winning short stories and poetry. Jan Evan Whitford is the creator of the Nikki O’Connor mystery series, which combines mystery, romance and humor; the first one in the series was Mystic Island and the second was Mystic Fear. And Frits Ferrer is a native Dutchman who, after suffering through World War II as a child, moved here and became a decorated Air Force pilot. He’s written six adventure/political thrillers, among them Thunderclouds Over America and Golden Nugget.
Proof of a literary connection: The Emerald Coast Writers Group lists more than 30 working writers in the Panhandle region.
EMERALD COAST
Many planners insist that meetings along the Emerald Coast of Okaloosa County are especially productive because the relaxing atmosphere enhances focus and engagement.
“In fact, a number of planners have even moved here after seeing it,” says Sherry Rushing, travel industry sales director at the Emerald Coast Convention & Visitors Bureau. “We offer Southern hospitality, natural beauty [and] good facilities.”
There are 13,000 hotel rooms in the region, which is anchored by the cities of Destin and Fort Walton Beach, and about 107,000 sq. ft. of meeting space. A third of that space is in the Emerald Coast Convention Center, including 35,000 sq. ft. of column-free meeting and exhibit space and the 21,000-square-foot Grand Ballroom.
Hotel options in Fort Walton Beach include Ramada Plaza Beach Resort with 335 rooms, 15,100 sq. ft. of meeting space, two onsite restaurants and three bars, and Four Points by Sheraton Destin-Fort Walton Beach with 216 rooms, 5,970 sq. ft., outdoor heated pools and three dining options.
SOUTH WALTON
Just to the east of Destin and Fort Walton Beach is South Walton County, comprised of 15 beach neighborhoods—some with meeting facilities.
he largest meetings area is Sandestin Golf & Beach Resort, a 2,400-acre resort with 30 village neighborhoods featuring rental condos, villas, beach hotel accommodations and town homes, with a total room count of nearly 1,300.
The Hilton Sandestin Beach Golf Resort & Spa is within Sandestin, but is its own entity with 600 rooms and 32,000 sq. ft. of meeting space. Appealingly, many of its event facilities are located outside, including a courtyard, decks and the beach itself.
Like the rest of the Panhandle coastline, this is an area where the blue-green waters and sublime sunsets lull visitors into a state of utter relaxation—a benefit meeting attendees will likely embrace.
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