As you may already know, for the last few years I have done a girls' trip with my sister and 2 best friends. So far we have been to Newport Beach, CA, Santa Barbara, CA and Charleston, SC. You can check out a couple of those travel guides here and here. When we plan where to go on these trips, it usually has to have good food, be really cute and be near water. All of us would stare at the ocean all day, so that seems to be a common theme for where we choose to go. I was the only one who had been to Rosemary Beach before. I am normally there once a year to attend Amber Housley's Coterie Mastermind Retreat. So this was my 6th trip to that area. So I'm going to share what we did on this trip and throw in a few tried and true spots that I know and love from past trips as well.
When I go to Rosemary Beach for my business retreat, I like to stay a night at The Pearl hotel. It's right in center of Rosemary Beach and it's so lovely. But when we stay as a group, we love a house to spread out, cook if we want to, lounge around and watch a movie together and not have to split up into 2 or more rooms. We found this home kind of last minute after cancelling our previous booking (long story!) and we could not have loved it more! It was gorgeous and had the PERFECT location!
The house was way bigger than we needed and now we are going to be so spoiled going forward. It had 7 bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms, so we each got our own king bedroom with en suite bathroom. We used the beautiful kitchen to cook 2 nights while we were there. The pool was heated and we used that a couple of times. But the living room got so much use for morning chats over tea and coffee and movies at night. There were also bikes that came with the house, so we were able to use those to ride between Alys Beach and Rosemary Beach.
It was also in a gated community, so we felt super secure. We also had private beach access with a code only for our community and we could access that beach with a few minutes of walking. It was so convenient and I would 1000% stay here again!
I have a few tried and true favorites when I visit Rosemary Beach, but my favorite places to go happen to be in Alys Beach, which is the next little beach town over. Rosemary Beach feels like Europe meets Charleston and Alys Beach feels like you could be in Greece with its all white buildings. And then there is Seaside, which is bright and colorful. And there are great places to go there as well.
So, I'm going to break it up town by town and give you my favorites.
The Citizen is one of my favorite places to eat in Alys Beach. It is delicious and also the restaurant is beautifully designed. We went for dinner and we also ended up there for Oyster Happy Hour as well. I highly recommend that you go!
I also always make it a point to go to Neat, which a cocktail bar and bottle shop. They change their menu each month, so I have never had the same drink there twice. They also serve yummy bar snacks as well. I always try at least 2 drinks and then grab a bottle of something to bring with me to the retreat. But on our girls' trip we stopped by in the afternoon for a drink on our way back from a bike ride before we went to the beach and it was great as always!
For breakfast, I love Fonville Press. Their fried chicken biscuit is SO good and so is the breakfast flat bread. They also have a full bar and a cute little market attached as well.
Other places to check out - Raw + Juicy and George's.
On our first night, we went and grabbed a drink at Havana Beach Bar at The Pearl hotel. I've had breakfast there before, but I would love to go back and try it for dinner. The bar was great though!
For dinner we went to La Crema | Tapas & Chocolate. It is really good! The patatas bravas and the brussels sprouts are delicious as are the crab cakes!
We didn't eat in Seaside on our girls' trip, but I have some favorites that I need to share. First off, food trucks! There are plenty to choose from, but I highly recommend The Meltdown on 30A! I can never choose just one grilled cheese, so go with friends and split a few! I also really like The Great Southern Cafe and I like to grab a margarita and chips and queso at The Taco Bar.
This was probably our most low key trip that we have taken together. It was super restful and we took it really easy. But there was still plenty to do and we it was all a lot of fun!
As I mentioned, bikes were included in our house rental and we rode them quite bit. One day, we had big plans to ride them like 8 miles one way and 8 miles back, but thank goodness we came across The Hub and decided eating and shopping would be more fun than biking for 3 more hours. Lol! But they were great for getting from house over to Alys Beach and over to Rosemary Beach as well.
Relaxation was the name of the game for us on this trip, we booked spa treatments at The Pearl Spa. They only have 2 treatments rooms, so it does make it a little more difficult to schedule with a group of 4 since only 2 can go at a time. And I wanted a body treatment, but the other 3 wanted facials, but we couldn't do all 3 of them as facials if we wanted to have our treatments at the same time. If you have a treatment at the spa you can use the pool there and order food and drinks, so 2 of us did that while the other 2 got their treatments and vice versa. It worked out, but it probably wasn't how we would have chosen to do it. Although I will say the Tropical Bliss treatment was amazing - a body scrub followed by a massage. I would totally recommend it!
Shops abound in 30A. There is no shortage at all of cute little boutiques to walk around in. Alys Beach has some of my favorite - like Summerstory and Parasol! You can even grab a mimosa next door at Holiday Cafe and walk around with it while you shop.
In Rosemary Beach, I love Pish Posh Patchouli's, The Hidden Lantern Bookstore, Willow & OKO.
In seaside, my favorite places are Cabana Seaside Style and The Art of Simple. Plus, I love popping into The Seaside Style as well. They also have some fun outside vendors as well and we ended getting matching permanent bracelets together. Nothing like some adult friendship bracelets! Haha!
I think our favorite moments were spent on the beach. 30A has some of the most beautiful white and powdery sand and even in November the water felt warm enough to go into it.
We took drinks, charcuterie and our books with us and we laid on our beach towels reading, chatting and watching the sunset. It was magical. Our charcuterie boxes were made by Graze 30A and delivered to our house. They were the perfect thing to bring down to snack on while we sipped on Two Chicks that we grabbed in Rosemary Beach at Cork & Barrel.
And that wraps up this Rosemary Beach travel guide. I hope that if you visit you have as much fun as we did if you visit 30A. Comment below if you try anything on this list and what you thought!
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