Alquiler Casa/villa Port Saint Joe 15 personas Florida, Estados Unidos de América Ooh la la beach house at Cape San Blas Florida (Referencia:  5907)

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Ooh la la was named by our five-year daughter. It is a five-bedroom, four full bathroom beach house with a private beach-entry pool, pergola, firepit, and boardwalk to the white sand beach of Cape San Blas. There are two living rooms with large, flat-screen televisions, a dining area that seats 14, and a fully stocked kitchen. Three bedrooms have king size beds, one bedroom has two queen size beds, and the last bedroom has bunk beds that sleep 8 children. With incredible views of the ocean and the sunset are a third-story deck, a screened porch on the second floor, and a patio on the ground floor. Ooh la la is the perfect atmosphere for a relaxing vacation. Oohlalabeach.com

Vecindad

We recently built a beach house. I haven’t said that a lot yet, and it still seems surreal to me. Family, neighbors, and friends have all asked what made us decide to build a second home on the beach, and I can’t quite explain it to them other than it just felt right.



I can’t recall the exact moment my husband and I decided to own a house on the ocean – maybe it was while we were engaged more than 15 years ago and mapped out our life on a paper napkin at Pizza Hut… maybe it was during law school when we embarked on frequent road trips to the beach when we should have been studying so that we could wash our stress away in the moonlit waves and get our perspective back before finals started… maybe it was the day my husband and I spent all day at the beach with our then 4-year old daughter crafting the most amazing sand castle and finding in ourselves the creativity and imagination that we thought only a kid at the ocean could possess… maybe it was when we realized we actually had the finances to do it and the excuses not to just became pointless and empty…



So, it was easy to decide on Cape San Blas -- a beautiful piece of white sand beach with clear ocean water that changes color with the weather. If it sounds like the stereotypical postcard, believe me that it’s far from it. It is so tranquil there that there’s no static of reality or status. At Cape San Blas, there are real people who have never owned neon colored bikinis or fake tans and who would never settle for defrosted seafood at chain restaurants. It’s not popular enough for those kinds of distractions. Not when the water sparkles so brightly that your eyes instinctively squint and you have to run towards the waves when you step off the boardwalk because the white sand is too hot on your bare feet. Not when you and your family are the only people on the beach, except for the occasional couple who walks by with a dog that sniffs your feet and the older man in a collapsible lawn chair with a cooler and a fishing pole. Not when your cell phone can’t always get a signal and valuable beach gear is actually left on the beach for days without the slightest worry. Not when the church service is held under a temporary pavilion at the edge of the bay in the summer and you can go kayaking in that same bay afterwards to watch the horseshoe crab scurry away from your shadow. The only distractions at Cape San Blas are the ones we can’t find in our normal life.

Eventos a proximidad

When we’re there, I find myself doing things I never thought I would do – like being in my mid-thirties playing “tag” with the ocean waves and proudly hot gluing a tacky sea shell collection to a mirror. I have the time to watch boats drift from one horizon to the other, make up silly lyrics to songs (only to hear my daughter announce that I need to tune up my voice), and play “what am I thinking?” -- our family’s spin on the classic game of 20-questions. One of my most favorite memories is last year when my daughter was five and went scallop hunting with my husband on the bay side of Cape San Blas while I stayed in the water closer to shore just watching the hermit crabs creep in and out of the dunes. My daughter, who hadn’t quite mastered the skill of breathing through a snorkel at that time, opted to sit on my husband’s back with her face above the water while he swam, and she used his snorkel like a microphone to talk to him before putting the snorkel to her ear to listen to his replies while he swam underwater. I don’t know what they talked about through that snorkel but it must have been important because their conversation lasted about an hour and they only found a handful of scallops.



Meal times at the beach house are vastly different than those in our normal life where we rush to drive thru’s and restaurants because there’s always some place we have to be next and there’s too much exhaustion to actually cook. But, at the beach house, the only rush is to pack a picnic to catch the sunset over the ocean. When we’re there, I’ll look around at the hodgepodge mix of people sitting down to share a meal– those who took us up on our invitation to take off to the beach for a few days - and watch them enjoying themselves with water dripping from their hair, sand stuck to their calves, but eyes dancing with laughter. Some of their paths would not have crossed, especially without makeup and deodorant, if it wasn’t for being there in such a relaxed environment together. That’s the kind of magic that happens only at the beach and makes my soul smile.



Each trip, we make a point to go to the only eating places within miles of our beach house, and they feel as comforting and inviting to me as wool socks at night. My daughter’s favorite is the convenience/bait/gas store where the employees wear different matching t-shirts each day with clever sayings and the hot dogs spinning on their cooker taste better than any other when paired with a Jones Soda that is made with real sugar. My husband’s favorite is the Raw Bar where you sit on plastic chairs at uneven tables in an old converted gas station devouring one of just five fresh seafood dishes on the menu and only stop to help yourself to a drink at the back cooler or to tear off a “napkin” from the paper towel roll in the middle of the table. My favorite? The meals we lazily cook over the fire on the beach at sunset and top off with s’mores when the stars come out. Or, if we are lucky, we’ll run into a neighbor who is grilling something they just caught while fishing, and they tell us to come over as we are. And, they really mean it.



The beach house and the ocean forces our family to remove ourselves from business suits, carpools, and to-do lists and to simply enjoy the present, to rejuvenate, to engage in honest conversation that lasts longer than a text message or daily itinerary briefing, and to escape from responsibilities any bigger than remembering to hang up a wet beach towel. The only thing to do at our beach house is just be yourself. And, for some reason, that’s more natural at the beach.



So, when I say that we just built a beach house, some people automatically want to know how many bedrooms it is or what we picked out for the countertops in the kitchen, or they think it’s only about the status of having a house at the beach. But, it’s not any of those things to us. Our beach house is about finding a place where we belong and can enjoy being together with family and friends. We actually feel more comfortable and at home when we’re at our beach house than in our real home where we are each pulled in so many different directions. Going to Cape San Blas gives us the opportunity to notice the details in life that would otherwise pass us by in a blur. It still seems surreal that we own a piece of the beach, and I can’t explain how that translates into capturing a genuine piece of ourselves for a sliver of time. But it definitely feels right.