Food 'n' Fun at Sarasota Farmers' Market

Sarasota, FL       High:  82     Low:   60

Sparky accidentally got turned around the other day in downtown Sarasota and discovered a whole 'nuther side of Sarasota...A cutesy, artsy fartsy side...the "historic district" side of town. Lots of restaurants with outdoor cafe seating, cool shops, cool architecture, just a really neat part of the downtown area. Sparky saw this from the car, so she said, "HEY, ELDO! Let's go downtown on Saturday to the Farmers' Market and see some of these cool little places while we are there." Eldo is usually 90% OK with Sparky's activity director decisions, so we went there this morning.

Every Saturday, from 7:00--4:00 PM, thru mid April, over 70 vendors come--some with produce...It looked terrific and LOTs of it was organic... They come in with lots of other products as well. Homemade breads, pizza dough, health products, honeys, bakery goods, sweets, lots of plant nursery products, seafood, and more.....

There were artists' work displayed and lots of paintings for sale, beautiful watercolors, and mixed media pieces...

The exploring is the best part, sometimes we buy, sometimes we don't, but Sparky sure was tempted! She usually will buy some type of food item.  (Why does that not surprise me? wonders E.) Along wtih lots of good stuff to eat, there's entertainment. There was an excellent steel drums player there this morning....

There was a terrific violinist playing....He's for hire, he was GREAT!

There were interesting arts and crafts displayed.....Everything was so colorful!

Wanna buy a hand painted rain barrel? Sparky would, if she had a sticks and bricks house...(It's a good thing we don't! exclaims E. Hard telling WHAT she would be bringing home every week!) Or every day, says Sparky.   Wink, wink!

In case you haven't noticed, Sparky LOVES handcrafted things, and anything with a bit of whimsy in it!

There was a cool coffee cafe that was doing a booming business this morning. Little cafe tables up on top gave the customers a bird's eye view of the happenings down below....

And there were impromptu music performances on street corners and street performers themselves. This guy happened to be singing, but he looks like he might do the "mime" thing when he's not singing.

We walked along some of the side streets and explored the historic downtown district enough to know that we will be back again next week!  See you later!