Booking It: Downtown Books, Apalachicola, FL

So this was by no means a book trip. Beloved and I took a few days off of work to join some friends for a relaxing stay in a beach house on Cape San Blas in Florida. Now there is NOTHING out there. No stores, no restaurants....no cell service (oh the horror) just sand, sunshine and scallops. We spent two days searching St. Joseph's Bay for scallops and ended up red as lobsters. On the third day, when asked if I wanted to go back out in the bay, my answer was "&!#@$!#! NO!" I hurt, my skin was on fire, it was hot as you know where, I was bored and was in desperate need of SOMETHING ELSE so we went on up a few miles and went to the little downtown shopping area on the water in Apalachicola, FL.

It was not the kind of place you would ever expect to see one, but I have built in bookstore radar detection so when I saw the sign that said "BOOKS" from two blocks, some trees, and some buildings away, I had a small fit until Beloved was able to pull the truck over and I promise I didn't jump out until it came to a stop. Promise.

I love little bookstores. You never ever know what's going to be inside. Ever. My preconceived idea of what this bookstore would hold, based on it's location and the theme of the surrounding area: It's going to be Florida books, local stuff. Blah. But it's just so gorgeous from the outside that I had to go in anyway (like I wasn't) and I got the nicest surprise. It's a charming little bookstore, neat and tidy with a surprisingly varied selection of books. They had all the latest new releases, and while there were lots of local books they were beautiful books, like about the wildlife and sea glass and pictures of the beach. They had a shelf of children's books, and to my delight and joy, because somehow I've pretty much become a YA reader, there was a whole YA shelf! Right there in front of me, in a bookstore on the beach was a copy of The Summer of Skinny Dipping by Amanda Howells- I considered that to be fate and bought it. In addition to some lovely books, the store also carried knitting materials. How cute is that. The lady who rang up my books was very sweet and friendly which just made the whole experience complete for me.

We had a very nice day after that. I'm always in a better mood once I buy a book so we walked around downtown for a bit, had lunch, that kind of thing. A pet shop lady gave me some puppy potty training tips for my Shimmy girl (who is starting to catch on) and I bought a soap shaped like a giant moonstone. :)