Things to do in Sarasota on a Budget

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Siesta Beach, in Sarasota, is often ranked among the top two or three beaches in the United States. Wider than a football field is long, it stretches for roughly half a mile beside the sky blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The pure white sand gives visitors the sensation of walking on finely ground sugar. Sarasota County points out that "at the Great International White Sand Beach Challenge, Siesta Beach was recognized as having the whitest and finest sand in the world."  The shallow Gulf waters are ideal for wading. Life guards are on duty year round. Located on Siesta Key, it is an easy drive from downtown Sarasota, from the Sarasota/Bradenton Airport, or from Interstate 75. The free parking lot can accommodate 800 cars. Shade trees tower over 50 or 60 or more picnic tables with grills, ideal for family gatherings. There also is well designed playground equipment for younger children, lighted tennis courts, nets for beach volley ball and a soccer field. Be sure to bring your sun glasses and/or a baseball cap or a straw hat because the sand is 99 percent pure, brilliant white granulated quartz that reflects the sun.

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By far the top attraction here, this 66-acre site is where showman and circus legend John Ringling and his wife, Mable, collected art and built a house on a grand scale. Now under the aegis of Florida State University, the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art is the state's official art museum. It's filled with more than 500 years of European and American works, including one of the world's most important collections of 17th-century baroque paintings, collections of decorative arts, and traveling exhibits. The Old Masters collection includes five renowned tapestry cartoons by Peter Paul Rubens.

Built in 1924 and 1925 at a cost of $1.5 million and modeled after a Venetian palace, the Ringlings' 32-room palatial bayfront, four-story winter residence, Ca'd'Zan ("House of John" in the Venetian dialect), has been recently restored. An 8,000-square-foot terrace leads down to the dock at which Mable Ringling moored her Venetian gondola. Don't miss a tour of this house to see the period furniture and stunning architecture and artwork; in fact, I'd make it the first stop on your Ringling itinerary.

The Ringling Museum of the Circus is devoted to circus memorabilia (which is, in a way, more fascinating than the circus itself), including parade wagons, calliopes, costumes, and colorful posters. The grounds include a classical courtyard, a rose garden, a museum shop, and the historic Asolo Theater, a 19th-century Italian court playhouse, which the Ringlings moved here in the 1950s. It's now the centerpiece of the Florida State University Center for the Performing Arts. If you're hungry, check out the museum's on-site restaurant, Treviso, an elegant lunch-only spot serving fine Italian fare from 11am to 4pm. You can dine inside or, better yet, outside overlooking the Ringling's pristine grounds. A museum admission ticket isn't required to dine in the restaurant. You'll need most of a day to see everything here.

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Wander on a white sand beach beside by the warm, gentle Gulf of Mexico waters, in Venice, Florida  and you will undoubtedly want to join locals and out-of-towners in their search for prehistoric, fossilized sharks teeth. The fossilized teeth, which range from smaller than the nail on your little finger to three or more inches long, are brown, grey or black.  Fossilized sharks teeth can be attached to a gold or silver chain to create an  attractive pendant necklace that will remind you of your delightful trip for years to come.  Over the centuries, when an elderly shark expired, his remains would sink to the floor of the Gulf and be covered with sand. In time there would be little left but the teeth, which absorbed minerals and were eventually washed ashore by storms or left from the days when much of Florida was under water. People travel great distances to Venice to find shark teeth treasures.

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Nestled on the Manatee River, west of downtown, this park attracts history buffs by re-creating the look and atmosphere of the period when Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto landed here in 1539. It includes a restoration of de Soto's original campsite and a scenic .5-mile nature trail that circles a mangrove jungle and leads to the ruins of one of the first settlements in the area. Start by watching the 21-minute film about de Soto in America. From December to March, park employees dress in 16th-century costumes and portray the early settlers' way of life, including cooking and the firing of an arquebus, one of the world's earliest firearms.

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In addition to the marvelous John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art , Sarasota is home to more than 40 galleries and exhibition spaces, all open to the public. A convenient starting point is this downtown community art center, next to the Sarasota Convention and Visitors Bureau. It contains three galleries and a small sculpture garden, presenting the area's largest display of works by national and local artists, ranging from paintings and pottery to sculpture, cartoons, jewelry, and enamelware. There are also art demonstrations and special events.

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Birding in Southwest Florida is popular year round. The Rookery, a small island near the center of a quiet pond behind Sarasota County's South County Building on busy U.S. 41 (Tamiami Trail near Jacaranda Blvd.) has long been a birding hot spot. A variety of large shore birds nest on the island, including great blue herons, glossy ibis, great egrets, anhingas and night herons. A call for volunteers has gone out to help restore the vegetation on the outer shore of the pond. Dozens of Brazilian Peppers have been ripped out as part of an effort to get rid of the unwanted invasive species, so the shoreline is looking rather naked. The island itself retains thick vegetation. There is picnic shelter in front of the pond to shade one from the sun and to protect visitors from an unexpected rainstorm. A little more than a block from WalMart with a busy shopping center nearby, this quiet spot comes as a surprise to many tourists.

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It may surprise you that Amish and Mennonite families charter buses in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and other states to winter in the Pinecraft neighborhood of Sarasota. They have been coming to Sarasota since the 1920s. Despite the heavy traffic on Bahia Vista St. and Beneva Rd. men and women wearing traditional clothing often ride their three wheel bicycles, some with boxes attached behind the seat, to carry things. There are several excellent Amish style restaurants – Yoder's Amish Village and  Troyer's Dutch Heritage lead most local's lists, along with Mom's Amish Country Cooking, Der Dutchman, Dutch Haus, Dutch Oven, and out on Cattlemen Rd. Sugar & Spice.  All offer wholesome, traditional Amish meals, such as chicken and dumplings, liver and onions and meatloaf. Yoder's 25 varieties of pie includes shoofly, key lime, rhubarb, and many berry and creme pies.

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John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art

First time visitors to the John and Mable Ringling Museum in Sarasota may be
surprised to find that it consists of several massive buildings scattered over 66 acres. Fortunately people who don't like to walk are provided free rides in open air "trams"  beneath sprawling bayon trees. Others may not realize the Museum of Art on the grounds is the official art museum of the State of Florida, ranking among the top 20 in the United States. It does not feature circus posters. Instead, its gilded rooms include heroic-sized paintings by such illustrious sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century European artists as as Rubens, van Dyck, Velázquez, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, El Greco, Gainsborough and more.. The Ringling's amazing European style mansion, completed in 1926, and called Ca' d'Zan, has 56 rooms, and is open to the public. Two more building are dedicated to the circus that made the Ringlings tremendously wealthy. Short films depict how circus trains were unloaded and how the tents were set up in small towns almost overnight. Perhaps not as exciting as the attractions aimed at 21st century  youngsters in Orlando, still the John and Mable Ringling Museum and all that is on their landscaped former grounds is one of those must-see places for adults.