Florida's Finest Inns and Bed & Breakfasts (Florida's Finest Inns & Bed & Breakfasts) Review

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(More customer reviews)Bruce Hunt is a native Floridan who has authored an ideal travel guide to the Sunshine State's most quaint, historic, romantic, and eclectic lodgings. Whether a traveler on business wanting an alternative to corporate chain hotels and motels, a vacationer seeking a truly special memory, or a resident wanting a holiday day trip, Florida's Finest Inns And Bed & Breakfasts can offer lodging ideas and recommendations to fit every budget, circumstance, and desire. If you are planning a trip to or through Florida, begin with a thorough browsing of Bruce Hunt's Florida's Finest Inns And Bed & Breakfasts!

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From warm and cozy country bed & breakfasts to elegant and historic hotels, author, photographer, and illustrator Bruce Hunt has composed the definitive guide to Florida's most quaint, historic, romantic, and often eclectic lodgings.Come along for the ride as Bruce rambles around the state, stopping for a spell at 135 of the best inns and bed & breakfasts Florida has to offer. Written in an engaging, personal style, Florida's Finest Inns and Bed & Breakfasts relates the histories of many of the places Bruce visits as well as the personal stories of innkeepers and caretakers. Additionally, in the Foreword, Bruce discusses the lives of Henry M. Flagler and Henry B. Plant and their considerable contributions to Florida's architecture. Looking to spend some time in a Victorian house in a quiet, tree-filled neighborhood or at a seaside cottage that evokes memories of summers spent at the beach? Perhaps you'd like to stay in a grand Henry Flagler–era hotel where Vanderbilts, DuPonts, and Rockefellers wintered. You'll find theme rooms filled with offbeat antiques, claw-foot tubs, wicker furniture, canopy beds, and bay windows, along with heaps of old-fashioned hospitality and scrumptious, homemade food. Bruce personally visited each of the places he describes here and lets you in on which rooms are his favorites, what he had for breakfast, and even where to catch up with a few ghosts!Florida's Finest Inns and Bed & Breakfasts is required reading for road-weary travelers searching for a quiet respite from the hustle-bustle world.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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June Keith's Key West & the Florida Keys: Food Hotels Beaches Diving Fishing History Writers Festivals Attractions Museums Wildlife (2nd ed) Review

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(More customer reviews)I like using guide books, and have used others when visiting Key West, but this one is the ultimate. I felt like the author was sitting in the back seat of our rental car, providing a narration as we wandered around looking for sights and scenes that we had never seen before. The restaurant reviews were right on, and funny even. My husband and I liked the discussion of Hemingway and Tennessee Williams, and, believe it or not, we'd never heard of a wonderful movie, 'The Rose Tattoo,' filmed in Key West - which we never, ever miss when they show it late at night. We read about it in this book. Also, she recommends lots of books about Key West which we will read in preparation for our next trip. There are free sights to see on the road between Key West and Miami, and we'd never have known about them, either. Along the Overseas Highway there are some terrific beaches, libraries, a Pioneers Cemetery - on a beach! - a Hurricane Monument - that you don't know about unless you read about them in this book. Anytime someone we know is headed for the Keys, we give them this book. It's a winner.

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Discover where to go to swim with dolphins, dive the living reef, and camp on the beach in this true insider's guide to America's subtropical island. Descriptions of famous attractions, historic bars, renowned restaurants and America's only living coral reef are supplemented with information about some of its most famous inhabitants--from Jimmy Buffett to Ernest Hemingway and Tennessee Williams. 65 line drawings, 6 maps.

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Florida's Grand Hotels From The Gilded Age (FL) (Images of America) Review

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(More customer reviews)Anyone under the age of one hundred should find this compelling pictorial history of Florida's Grand Hotels in the gilded era fascinating beyond words. Flager on the east coast and Plant on the West Coast. We cannot underestimate the contribution each of these financial moguls made to the Florida we know today. Priceless !

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Florida in the late 1800s was a paradise waiting to be discovered. During this period, two visionary tycoons of the Gilded Age set out on separate ventures that would transform the Sunshine State from America's last frontier into a destination for the rich and famous. The grand hotels that Henry M. Flagler and Henry B. Plant opened at their planned resort sites offered a fantasy stay surrounded by all the accoutrements expected by sophisticated, Gilded Age patrons. Florida's Grand Hotels from the Gilded Age provides a look at these magnificent structures during their glory years, along with the fashionable entertainment and social and recreational pastimes that engaged their gilded guests.

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Flagler's St. Augustine Hotels: The Ponce de Leon, the Alcazar, and the Casa Monica Review

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(More customer reviews)Dr. Graham is an awesome teacher, I highly reccomend his book even though I have not read it. Although, anything by him must be good. Read Brinkley!

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Near the end of the nineteenth century Standard Oilmillionaire Henry Morrison Flagler ventured to St. Augustine, Florida,America's Oldest City, and transformed it into an exotic traveldestination for the social elite. He raised magnificent, fancifulSpanish Renaissance hotel palaces on what had been orange grove andsalt marsh. Then he connected his creation with the outside world bybuilding a modern railroad system.Flagler's hotels stand as monuments to innovation in architecture and engineering. They were the first large buildings in the United States constructed of poured concrete, and they pioneered use of novel amenities like electric lights, steam heat, and elevators. They are still a vital part of modern St. Augustine. The Ponce de Leon, Flagler's preeminent hotel, now houses Flagler College; the Alcazar now holds the City Hall and the Lightner Museum. Only the Casa Monica (previously called the Cordova) is presently a hotel.

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The Architecture of Leisure: The Florida Resort Hotels of Henry Flagler and Henry Plant (Florida History and Culture) Review

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(More customer reviews)If you are into early 20th century resort hotels, this book is for you. Lots of details about the building of these wonderful great buildings that are no longer with us. From the description of the places, one feels as if they had stayed there with the rich and famous. Before jets, television, etc, this is what the rich did in the winter. Really great book for your Florida history library.

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As the rail barons who transformed Florida pushed their lines southward, they also created a string of resort hotels to attract wealthy northerners with an appetite for balmy climates and luxurious accommodations. Susan Braden tells the story of the magnificent pleasure palaces created by Plant and Flagler and the impact of their conspicuous scale and opulence on the Florida wilderness.Braden traces the enterprises that brought Plant and Flagler to Florida and then examines each of their hotels, describing the architecture, how they physically functioned, and what they offered their guests in the way of recreation and leisure. From the Spanish Renaissance of St. Augustine's Ponce de Leon, to Georgian Revival in Palm Beach's Royal Poinciana, to the Islamic Revival of the Tampa Bay Hotel and the Alpine ambience of the nearby Belleview, her individual profiles of each hotel show how the builders mixed recognizable style with physical and functional independence, and then capped both with an aura of blatant luxury on a scale previously unknown in Florida. The hotels' creators, by catering to the newly realized needs and demands of their affluent patrons, brought civilization to the frontier and established the legacy of tropical fantasy and escape that endures in Florida to this day.Braden's research draws upon architectural plans and archival resources, as well as memoirs and accounts written by Gilded Age visitors and employees, to re-create the experience of Florida's winter resorts. Floor plans and abundant illustrations--many never before published--make this book a richly visual documentation that will appeal to architectural historians, preservationists, and general readers curious about Florida's pioneering tradition of exotic escape and the resplendent structures in which it was born.

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