This is by far our family’s favorite vacation venue. It has hands-down the most beautiful beach — long and wide and wonderful white sand. The island is about eight miles long, and about five miles of that is uninterrupted beach (a fabulous place for a morning run, by the way).
Siesta Beach is an easy-access public beach with lots of parking. It does get a tad crowded at peak spring-break weekends, but when that happens you can just mosey past the public beach area to Crescent Beach, which serves the many beachfront lodgings and has more limited public access, keeping crowds down.
Or you can wait until later in the day to hit the beach. Sunbathers are all but gone by 4 p.m., and sticking around for sunset is never a bad choice. There’s an almost surreal glow as the sun disappears below the horizon.
An absolute favorite place for a bite — we make a point to eat out here at least once on every trip — is City Pizza. It’s small and, situated next to a 7-11, doesn’t look like much from the outside, but the food is great and the service always friendly.
Visitors to Siesta Key also will want to take an afternoon (or more) to hit the Village. Siesta Key Village is a strip of shops and restaurants a block or so from the beach at the northern end of the island. This is where you’ll find nightlife, too, if you’re looking.
For stays on Siesta Key, which is connected to Sarasota by bridges on the northern and southern end of the island, your options are numerous. We’ve pretty much done it all here — stayed at hotel-resorts, rented condos from individual owners and worked with property management companies for various lodgings, from small efficiencies to a four-bedroom home we shared with friends. Two rental companies we’ve used successfully are www.siesta4rent.com and www.siestakey.com.
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