A havenly Florida retreat

"No way! I hate Florida!" my lady friend exclaimed after I had the temerity to suggest Longboat Key and Anna Maria Island for a relaxing winter getaway.

For all too many of us, Florida memories are rife with crowded beaches, even more crowded (and far too perky) theme parks, overdeveloped cities and suburbs, horrific traffic and entirely too much pastel.

"Well, you'll just have to trust me on this one," I finally told my mate. "This place is different."

The sublime beaches, ocean sunsets, lush vegetation, grouper sandwiches and cracked stone crab are alluring, to be sure. But a bigger part of the appeal is that this narrow strip of land offers up the best of "both" Floridas.

Longboat Key is the "new" Florida, with chi-chi shops, ritzy hotels and condos and upscale restaurants. If Boca Raton or a luxury liner is your cup of tropical Joe, this place is for you.

Anna Maria Island, next door, is the "old" Florida -- its restaurants, stores and lodgings more rustic and laid-back than on its tony neighbor to the south. If the Outer Banks or the Superior North Shore provides your kind of ambience, this place is for you.

We like 'em both. But we love the fact that at either end of this 20-mile sliver, the "other" Florida is within easy driving or biking distance, with the cities of Bradenton and Sarasota also close by and Tampa-St. Petersburg only an hour's drive away.

That kind of easy access makes Longboat Key/Anna Maria Island a fabulous destination for baseball's spring training. The Pittsburgh Pirates play their Grapefruit League games at a wonderfully refurbished old-style ballpark in Bradenton, the Cincinnati Reds at a sterile newer facility in Sarasota and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays at St. Pete's venerable Al Lang Stadium.

It's possible to catch the Twins at least once a week at one of those parks, or you can make the 1 1/2-hour trek down to Fort Myers.

The games, which start around March 1, could not be more different from going to the Metrodome. Tickets cost half as much and are easy to get unless the Yankees or Red Sox are in town.

Parking and concession lines are more manageable (although there are occasional "senior moments" among the employees). The players are much more available for autographs; last year I saw Alex Rodriguez signing for kids for nigh onto an hour, silencing the rubes who had been jeering him for his stratospheric salary.

And, of course, that giant orb in the sky is almost always glistening down on the proceedings.

Oh, and it's almost more fun to head to the teams' nearby training facilities and watch the players work out, beginning in mid-February, or to catch the minor leaguers doing drills and playing games throughout March.

That's how I first stumbled across the islands, as a home base for a baseball fanatic every March.

But over the years, I worked in more and more days at the beach. Now the sun and sand and lazy-hazy-crazy atmosphere at the north end of Longboat and all over Anna Maria Island beckon us throughout our winters.

No matter the time of year, the pace is the same: languid. As a friend once noted, "It just feels so remote, you almost have no other way to go but laid-back."

Even as it laps gently at the shore, the Gulf of Mexico seems boundless. Everyone moves slowly. Maybe one person in 100 is jogging rather than strolling along the sand or sidewalks. The 25-mile-per-hour speed-limit signs in Anna Maria are almost unnecessary.

This is a place for watching and feeding birds, for strolling and biking, for reading and lollygagging at the beach.

It's not a place for to-do lists. (Those who, like me, can't resist one should check out the accompanying article).

Rather, it's a place to rent a car (convertibles strongly recommended) or a bike and just go where the wheels, or your feet, take you. Stop in at places that look appealing. Or don't.

If you feel moderately active, go fishing off Longboat Pass, the bridge that connects the two islands. On a typically sunny day, it offers a view that will make you beam. If you feel more active, rent a boat or go parasailing or jet-skiing or windsurfing.

By all means, leave your watch at home. When the sun starts getting low in the sky, head west; you're never far from a beach.

But you don't need all this advice from me. Once you get to this glorious isle, where relaxation is truly contagious, you'll know what to do.

If you go to Longboat Key and Anna Maria Island

GETTING THERE

Several airlines fly into the spiffy Sarasota-Bradenton Airport, although from the Twin Cities, you'll have to make at least one stop en route. But there are several nonstop flights daily to the Tampa and St. Petersburg-Clearwater airports, and it should be no more than an hour's drive to the islands from either.

SLEEPY TIME

Longboat Key is awash with upscale resorts and hotels (including "the best Holiday Inn I've ever stayed in," according to an acquaintance who has stayed in way more than his share). Check out http://www.longboatkeychamber.com for myriad possibilities.

Throughout Anna Maria Island are more modest hotels, resorts and efficiency-type accommodations, plus some world-class villas. (http://www.annamariaislandchamber.org )

LIFE'S A BEACH

Unless you're staying on Longboat Key, there's not much access to the beaches there. But there is an open-to-the-hoi-polloi exception, Beer Can Beach, at the island's northern end, with street parking nearby.

Just across Longboat Pass is Coquina Beach, a huge stretch of sand and evergreens. It can get quite crowded with folks from the mainland on spring and summer weekends, but still is manageable.

My favorite beach is at the north end of Anna Maria, the little-known Bean Point. It's not the best swimming spot -- there are more anglers than swimmers. But the dunes and grasses and wind make you feel like you're in the middle of nowhere -- as long as not too many of you go at once.

DINING AL FRESCO

We'll start at the top of the island, with the fabulously funky Rod 'N' Reel Pier (877 North Shore Dr., Anna Maria, 1-941-778-1885 ). Besides fried oysters and a great piece of grouper for under $10, this throwback restaurant/bar has a wonderfully, uh, lived-in ambience.

As a friend once noted, "Where else in the world can one sit in a restaurant booth at the end of a pier at 9 a.m. and enjoy crab and a cup of coffee with virtually no tourists around except the few still there since 1956?"

You also can fish, feed the pelicans or sometimes even feed dolphins from the pier.

About a mile south is a little slice o' heaven known as the Sandbar (100 Spring Av., Anna Maria, 1-941-778-0444 ). A huge deck overlooks the gulf and a contest every afternoon provides a bottle of champagne for the patron who comes closest to predicting the time the sun will disappear from the horizon.

The seafood is excellent, the drinks come in all shapes, sizes and colors, and there's a guy singing Jimmy Buffett, Eagles and James Taylor songs. And somehow none of it seems the least bit hokey.

The same folks operate Mar Vista (760 Broadway St. , Longboat Key, 1-941-383-2391 ). And while there's often an excruciatingly long wait for an outdoor table, there's nothing painful about hanging out inside, in an old nautical-themed room where Ernest Hemingway would have felt right at home.

MORE GOOD EATS

Some of the islands' best seafood can be found next door to Mar Vista at Moore's Stone Crab Shack (800 Broadway St., Longboat Key, 1-941-383-1748 ). Besides the titular treat, they'll cook any of a dozen kinds of fish to order (broiled, fried, sauteed, etc.). If snook or pompano is on the menu, consider it seriously.

There's a bevy of upscale restaurants along Gulf of Mexico Drive in Longboat Key, but I generally mosey past all of them to St. Armands Circle on the island between the key and Sarasota, where a wonderful branch of my favorite Tampa restaurant resides. The Columbia Restaurant (411 St. Armands Circle, Sarasota, 1-941-388-3987 ) doesn't have the 1,600 seats of its forebear to the north, but it does have the best Spanish cuisine I've come across on these shores. It's a classic, too, part of a small Florida chain founded in Tampa's Ybor City in 1905. That branch calls itself Florida's oldest restaurant.

And once you get tired of seafood -- yes, it does happen -- head for Mr. Bones BBQ (3007 Gulf Dr., Holmes Beach, Anna Maria, 1-941-778-6614. ) Great African and Caribbean folk art abounds; there's a casket by the door filled with ice and two dozen types of beer, and the food -- from exquisite baby-back ribs to Congo chicken to amazing fried rices -- is also all over the map.

It lives up to the sign over the door: "No salt, pepper, ketchup in dining room . Don't even ask. Our food is expertly made by New Orleans-trained chefs. No improvement is needed."

-- Bill Ward is at billward@startribune.com .

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