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Rosemary Beach - Part 2
Written by: Dominick A. Miserandino
Photography by: Margherita Miserandino
The hardest story one has to write is one where you have nothing to complain about.
Day 2
I woke up early and went for a walk... a long walk. Margherita was still sleeping and when she did get up she still had to get ready, which I knew bought me quite a lot of time. Figuring that she has a 12-step plan just to get ready in the morning, I knew I was free for a little while.
Every house in Rosemary Beach is unique. I repeat, each is completely different. I said the same point twice because when I’m saying unique, I’m not saying unique, like in your neighborhood, you might say, "The Johnson’s house is painted white, but the Smith’s house is painted green."
We’re not saying unique like, "Wow, that Victorian is unique from the other one."
They are unique as in, "Hey, I’m an architecture student. Where can I learn every major architectural style from the south?"
Yes, they have a common thread throughout, but they also have a wide enough pallet to play with.
To make matters more intense, every house is not only unique, but they are the kind of houses that you only see in the nicer sections of town. I mean, they even have an HGTV house used for a television special.
In addition, the houses are made with only original materials. In fact, on a tour they said, "If it looks like wood, it’s wood. If it looks like marble, it’s marble. Nothing is fake." It's the high quality that makes up a community where C.E.O.s retire.
Anyway, I walked around the town, to the beach, by the pools and returned back. Why was I walking so much? Beside the fact that Margherita was still getting ready, there was a lot to explore. Not only the architecture, but the town is unique for its gardens. Every garden, every walkway, looks like a professionally manicured, botanical garden. In addition, rosemary is everywhere. The smell and the look of the herb permeates every feature. While I walked that morning, a mix of the sea and rosemary floated by, just like the local butterflies. With all of that going on, I’m sure you can see why I kept walking as long as possible.
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The beach at Rosemary Beach |
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Margherita and I walked together to the Town Hall for a tour. Even though the town is only a few years old, they do require a town hall, post office and the such. The developers started the ball rolling, but now things are moving towards the town basically running itself. To me it’s a mind-boggling concept. They just looked at the ground, the beach and the native rosemary plants and said, "Wow, it’s kind of pretty here." Within a few years, they created a town.
The tour went over the architectural styles, which is based on, either the British West Indies, St. Augustine or New Orleans. They’ve created rules to keep things somewhat uniform, (like the plants need to be native), but really what’s most amazing to me is that in spite of all of these homes, there are so many open places. Little greens and plazas are everywhere. There are walking paths and walkways between the houses so basically, you can walk throughout parts of the town without seeing a car.
Even though this is a development, instead of just rushing to build the houses, they’ve created these policies in place, to think of everything. They have policies like maintaining a certain minimum distance between each house, and not confusing the turtles.
It seems that Loggerhead and Green Turtles are native to the area and certain lights can look like the full moon and confuse the poor things during mating seasons. If you’re lucky enough to have a house right on the beach, you need to have certain types of windows and lights, which don't upset the turtles.
The tour ended up back on Main Street, which has a series of stores, a restaurant, a bed and breakfast, and an upcoming inn. We had lunch at Medusa Rouge, which is a wine bar, but also serves nifty hamburgers. The entire time I was having deja vue of being in New Orleans.
What did we do after lunch? We rode the rental bikes. Yes, even Margherita whose bike remains in our garage after collecting no more then two miles in seven years. Even Margherita rode the bike.
Rosemary Beach is a destination for biking. The walkways and boardwalks are everywhere and biking, to me, is the only way to see every house.
Each house is a metaphoric chess piece on an architect’s battlefield. The best of the best architects are working here and each is attempting to outdo the other. Since the town is rather compact, you can bike from one end to the other in a few minutes and see the results of the battle.
Our first stop was the beach, which was another new experience with Margherita besides the biking. Okay, that didn’t sound right, but I did more firsts with her this weekend than in the past seven years. It practically put our honeymoon to shame. Anyway, the beach was empty and pristine and all ours. Yes, there were some people about a mile away, but they were so far, they didn’t count. We waded into the ocean and watched the little fish by our feet. I thought it was cute, but Margherita ran out screaming in fear.
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Margherita's Favorite Kitchen |
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From the beach, it was off to the pool where Margherita even went swimming. Three firsts in one day! To understand my surprise, you must understand that I’ve seen my wife in a bathing suit twice in my life. Once when she tried it on, and the second time was actually wearing it this time at the beach.
Anyway, one of the pools is called, the Coquina Pool, which has a "negative edge." When you’re in the pool there’s no outer wall rising above the water. The water just rolls over the wall, which gives the illusion of never ending, and recycles back from there. It’s simply beautiful.
Anyway, we threw on our towels, and peddled back to the room in just a few minutes. We then changed for dinner and rode to the restaurant in Margherita’s dress. Well, she wore the dress, but she made a very big deal that she was wearing a fancy dress, while peddling a bicycle and nobody looked at her funny.
I loved the idea that we could simply ride our bikes everywhere in this town without any problems. Plus, there’s always a place to tie up your bike.
Anyway, we went to the Pensione bed and breakfast, where the first floor was made up of an Italian restaurant, Sapresti. We laughed, joked, rested from our bike ride and had the best damn calamari in our lives. The moon was full, the stars were out, and my wife was willing to swim, bike and go to the beach with me. It was a good day.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
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