The day dawned with a major fog alert, (so maybe it didn’t really dawn at all?!), and we headed off on our beach bikes by 8AM to meet a cousin of a friend of Erica’s for breakfast on Siesta Key. It was about a 4 mile ride in the dense fog, across the channel and along the beachy town road. Quite pretty, but a bit chilly and misty.
Pat is retired, and lives half the time here, and is on the Board of the Ringling Museum Foundation, so not only did he have good travel stories, he was able to give us an inside tour of the many buildings making up the Ringling Art Museum and Circus Museum and other buildings on the 68 acre property John Ringling donated to the state of Florida when he died. (More on that in a bit).
After a filling breakfast at Another Broken Egg Cafe, we rode our beach bikes along the water’s edge on what has just been named the #1 Beach in America. Of course we’ve heard that before, but this was truly a beautiful beach. Even in the fog you could see the miles of broad white sand and low surf of the gulf. And lots of shells. The sand is actually finely ground quartz — so fine it was almost like baby powder. But hard packed, so ideal for walkers and even bikes. We rode to the end, chained up the bikes and navigated the waves to a cove of shells and rocks along what is technically private property. It was so quiet there was no one there, and so many shells to collect. Of course we had to watch the tide since as time went on it was trickier to get back to the other side of the wall.
We rode back to our airbnb with our stash and readied ourselves for an afternoon at the Ringling compound with Pat. Time was short, but we were able to see the ground floor of the art museum, which houses 5 of Rubens’ massive paintings that were copied onto tapestries now displayed in Italy. Mabel Ringling was a significant fan of the Venetian Gothic style and the mansion, Ca d’Zan, was an amazing tribute to that style, set right on Sarasota Bay. The Art Museum also reflected this design passion, with a massive courtyard filled with statuary, right down to the replica of David standing overlooking the bay. Some of the items in their collection came from buying trips they made overseas, and some from “yard sales”, like th one the Vanderbilts must have had when they emptied out their Gothic Room at Marble House in Newport. At any rate, it was an impressive collection, made more interesting by the means in which John and Mabel made their selections and acquisitions. We only had a few minutes in the building with their private railway car and the other circus artifacts, but it looked to be an interesting collection of the things that one associates with the famed Circus.
I’m hoping for better weather in the next few days to really enjoy the beach, but it’s not looking good, so it may be that I have some time to catch up on my book and relax a bit. Trying to live with a vacation where the weather isn’t as good as it is at home isn’t an easy one for me!
