Sanibel Island 10th Anniversary Trip: Part One

Let me start by saying this was one of the best vacations of my life. I like to travel and take weekend getaways often so that is saying a lot.

This was our first time to ever go to Sanibel Island/Captiva. My brother and his wife actually honeymooned there and always raved about how much they loved it. Chris surprised me and planned a trip for just me and him for our 10 year wedding anniversary. There was also another little surprise, but I'll save that detail for later. 

We flew into the Fort Myers airport which is the cutest little airport! It's so clean, beachy, and not busy at all. I know a lot of people don't like the smaller airports, but I actually LOVE them. Everyone is so friendly and not rushing say like in Atlanta or Miami. We picked up our rental car (they pretty much force you to get a convertible mustang) and we were on our way! Oh, and we always use Hertz... they're always the best rental company.

The island was only about a 45 min drive from the airport. 

Our first stop was Island Pizza for lunch because frankly it just looked yummy and it said they were rated #1 pizza on the island. We were starved since we had woken up at 3:30 that morning and we never eat much when we fly. The pizza was tasty (a little burned on the bottom though). The marinara that came with it was canned sauce I could tell, so I was obviously disappointed in that. Probably won't be going back there because we found so many other yummy places!

We drove around top down on the car until it was time for us to check in to our condo. We stopped and had some ice cream at Pinocchio's. Why not?! Calories don't count on vacation, remember that friends!! I highly recommend this ice cream parlor. I had the Sanibel Crunch and it was amazing. But really, how can you mess up ice cream?! ;) Answer: You can't.

We got finally got checked into our room at Casa Ybel. This place is gorgeous! Everything is super clean (which I'm pretty particular about) and the views, the room size, the amenities are all great! We had a one bedroom unit of course, but they do have two bedrooms available as well.

This was our room and below is the view from it. I loved the fact that you could be on the beach from our room in about 100 steps, no elevators or long hallways. Actually, no high rise condos are allowed to build on the island and that's a nice change of scenery from where we normally go. 

Our room was one of those units behind Chris. 

Here are a few more pics from the resort. I would totally recommend staying here and might even stay here again when we go back. Next time we'll be bringing the kids though.

There is some great "shelling" and swimming on this area of beach. Which, obviously ,we did both!

Just an FYI, you're going to want to purchase shelling shoes before you go because they are premium price on the island and trust me, you are only going to wear these beauties while shelling! ;) 

We found tons of live sand dollars. 

The water was amazing. No really, it was. Floating in that water was some of my favorite time on the trip.

I'm going to break the post into two parts for the sake of this becoming the longest blog post in history! I'll have a lot more info on restaurants and activities in part two. :)