The forecast wasn’t great for this morning, it should have been foggy. I took the fact that it was actually cloudy instead, but by the time we went for breakfast at Palm Avenue Deli, it was hot enough to have parasols open at our table.

https://palmavenuedeli.com

This deli specialises in Jewish food cooked by a husband and wife team who set up in 2023. I chose a healthy avocado toast dressed with pumpernickel, dill, cucumber and pickled red onion. It was great but there was probably not enough.

We decided to go for a walk to Bayfront Park after breakfast. The temperature was hotting

up and it felt quite muggy. Bayfront Park is situated close to the Marina on the edge of Sarasota Bay. We walked around the perimeter of the park and saw joggers, families and people working on their boats. It’s not a massive park but has nice scenery looking across the bay.

There is a bronze statue entitled “Olympic Wannabees” which inspired its creator, Glenna Goodacre, after seeing children enthusing about the Summer Olympics of 1996.

We then headed for Burns Court, a hip part of Sarasota with pastel painted houses, art chalked on to the pavements, boutique shops and cafes.

https://www.visitsarasota.com/article/must-see-neighborhood-burns-court

We slowly walked down South Pineapple Avenue whilst I took some snaps of the artwork there. There were some interesting pieces that you can see on my video above.

We then stopped at Fountain Cafe for a quick drink which turned into lunch. There was a laid back feel to the place and the staff were really lovely. Sitting there, we saw a blow up Donald Trump on the back of a truck pass by. The driver must have been airing his political views.

After leaving the Fountain Cafe we walked some more of the area, going down Burns Lane and Burns Court. This area is a U-shaped street which is home to the Sarasota Film Society. It’s unmissable because it is painted in pastel pink. A guy who told us he did movie tours said that the building was closed. It didn’t matter to us as we had no intention of going there. I think he did like the sound of his own voice a little too much as he then started to tell us about two films that he highly recommended, neither of which I’d heard of. He then said, “but then we all have an opinion don’t we?”. Er, yes, seems like we do.

There are boutique shops and other independent businesses around here which are visited by locals and tourists. You can’t also miss the fifteen bungalows which are painted in different pastel colours. Owen Burns built these in the Mediterranean Revival Style in 1924 and 1925 and owned many other developments in Sarasota. He also helped to found the first Sarasota bank.

His Burns Construction Company connected St Armands Key and Lido Key to Sarasota.

The heat of the afternoon sun was taking its toll on JC so we walked back to the hotel for a break. After a while we headed up to the hotel rooftop bar for a cocktail. I had a Watermelon Sugar High (well two actually because it had grapefruit juice in it which JC isn’t allowed). It was delicious.

It was still hot but we made the best of the sunshine as I couldn’t imagine what the weather would be like back home.

Our evening meal was booked at Kojo, which is a couple of doors down from Art Ovation Hotel. This is a popular Japanese restaurant and it was very busy tonight. We even saw Brian Johnson from ACDC in there! I had miso soup to start with, then wagyu beef steak. It was all delicious. I didn’t drink any wine and stuck with water tonight as I’m driving early tomorrow – back to Miami.

https://sarasotaarts.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Public-Art-book_single-pages_compressed.pdf