02/25/2024
Great article just posted about Pensacola.
This Beautiful Florida City Has One Of The Best Beaches In The Country!
Pensacola, in Florida, is gaining recognition for its 64 km long strip of sugar sand beaches, along with its abundant history and culture.
On the western edge of Florida's panhandle, one underrated city offers an oasis of surprising history, a bucolic beachfront — among the best in the nation — and a culture-rich downtown. Welcome to Pensacola, a Florida city like no other, where the sugary-white beach shares turf with roaring Blue Angels aircraft, the oldest settlement in America, and a veritable gumbo of Southern flavors.
“We have exactly what you need in terms of sand and sun, and you get the best of both worlds from a sun and sand perspective here, but also a rich cultural experience,” said Sid Williams-Heath, executive director of the Pensacola Little Theatre. “I don’t think a lot of beach towns have both.”
Williams-Heath cited the city’s thriving food and arts scene, and a community that’s welcoming, progressive, and unpretentious. “There’s a sustainable nostalgia here,” he added. “You can have a very high-quality experience, but you can also put your hair down and your flip-flops on and have a very unpretentious trip as well.”
For Nicole Stacey, one of Pensacola’s 100,000 residents who serves as the curator for the city’s annual Foo Foo Festival, the locals make it special. “People know the Gulf Coast and they think they know the panhandle, but they come here and it’s like a breath of fresh air,” she explained. “It’s a beautiful beach city with a great downtown. The rest of the panhandle doesn’t really have that, and the people take so much pride from being here.”
Hotel: In 2023, an abandoned church was converted into Lily Hall, a game-changing boutique with artful decor, an excellent restaurant, and Pensacola’s first speakeasy bar.
Restaurant: It’s contemporary American cuisine with a rigorously local and seasonal through line at George Bistro + Bar, an elegant dining staple — and date night requisite — famed for an ever-changing menu with dishes like Gulf grouper with brown butter–roasted spaghetti squash.
Thing to Do: Spanning miles of Santa Rosa Island, Pensacola Beach offers the kind of sugar-white sand that people imagine when they fantasize about Florida beaches.
Nightlife: Since 1967, Seville Quarter has been a downtown cornerstone for live music, dancing, and dueling pianos, in a sprawling, multiroom space reminiscent of New Orleans’ French Quarter.
Shopping: Open every Saturday year-round, Palafox Market is the foremost farmers’ market in the region, comprising myriad farmers and purveyors selling everything from local meat and cheese, to arts, crafts, antiques, and soaps.
Nightlife: Since 1967, Seville Quarter has been a downtown cornerstone for live music, dancing, and dueling pianos, in a sprawling, multiroom space reminiscent of New Orleans’ French Quarter.
Shopping: Open every Saturday year-round, Palafox Market is the foremost farmers’ market in the region, comprising myriad farmers and purveyors selling everything from local meat and cheese, to arts, crafts, antiques, and soaps.
Historic Village
“We are America’s first settlement, and people don’t realize the history,” said Stacey of the fact that Pensacola was established in 1559 by Don Tristan de Luna, making it older than oft-cited St. Augustine. That history is on full display at Historic Pensacola Village, an 8.5-acre downtown district filled with of-the-era homes, museums, and interpreters clad in period garb
Fort Pickens
A star attraction of Gulf Islands National Seashore, which encompasses thousands of acres of Florida coast, Fort Pickens is a maritime sentinel completed in 1834 to protect Pensacola Bay with an imposing five-bastioned behemoth of brick and cannon fire. Today, it’s open for guests to explore its myriad passageways and rooms, with a 360-degree view of the coast and bay from its roof.
National Naval Aviation Museum
In Pensacola, you’re just as likely to spot Blue Angels aircraft in the sky as pelicans. The iconic Navy squadron is based here, and best experienced at the National Naval Aviation Museum, where hundreds of aircraft are on display in the 350,000-square-feet of exhibits and 37 acres of grounds from which to watch the jets soar overhead. “Every time I see them, I get goosebumps,” said Stacey. “What they’re doing up in the air is unlike anything else you’ll see. People can go and sit on the flight-line and watch them, or if you don’t have that time, you can go to Fort Pickens and watch them from the National Seashore seashore
Pensacola, in Florida, is gaining recognition for its 64 km long strip of sugar sand beaches, along with its abundant history and culture.
