Jacksonville Adventures

Once again, I am heading back to Jacksonville, Florida for work. This time it is for 4 weeks. My husband is still down there so the best part is I get to see him. I had a nice break from him for 2 weeks 😉 but as they say: long distance makes the heart grow fonder. True statement. I am excited to see him!

I started out my flying routine by stopping by Starbucks at the airport terminal. I order my usual which is a Grande Green Tea Frappuccino with vanilla bean flavor and a cinnamon raison bagel with cream cheese. Unfortunately, the Starbucks ran out of cinnamon raison bagels so I had to resort to a plan bagel instead. No big deal.

Yummy. Starbucks Green Tea Frappuccino is amazing especially if you add vanilla bean powder flavoring. It adds a nice sweet taste. It does not include coffee but still taste good, so if you don’t like coffee this is a drink for you.

As I was waiting for my fight at the terminal, I sat next to some nice guys. They were so sweet and full of energy. They had some very interesting stories to tell. I felt like I was watching a comedy stand up or something because these guys were hilarious. Everyone around was chuckling. They even brought their adorable cat Marlen with them. This cat was meowing like crazy, which added more to the entertainment. Adorable. Effective way to start an early morning, watching a live comedy show. 😊

Every time I fly, I prefer the window seat. You want to know why? I can look out the window and see the beautiful landscapes in the sky. Another reason why I like the window seat is if I get tired I have something to lean my head against and pass out. Hehe. My husband hates the window seat and chooses the aisle seat so he can stretch out his legs and get up easier to use the bathroom. I think he also likes it since he has an easier time escaping when we exit a plane. *Whispers* he doesn’t like flying so whatever makes him happy and calm, I am all for it.

I love this type of sight when flying. I get to see some interesting clouds. Very relaxing.

While up in the air, have to enjoy my diet coke and cookies at 20,000 feet. 😉

I love biscoff cookies so much and I always look forward to receiving these when I fly. I know I can’t be the only one… right?

Enough about flying. Time to get to the good stuff. Places to visit and food to eat in Jacksonville, Florida.

First thing on the agenda:

Bono’s Pit BBQ

Best BBQ I have tasted so far in any restaurant! I love the rustic theme in this place. What makes this restaurant #1 on my scale is once you order, it was super quick to come out to enjoy. From entering the resturant to ordering the food then receiving food it was about 10 minutes! 10 minutes! I couldn’t believe it! I thought fast food was fast but this was super quick. Then I have to consider that most BBQ places have to start early to cook ribs and pork since they are most likely smoking them in some way. It takes hours to cook properly, I know since my husband use to smoke pork shoulders and ribs. Yummy!

Sorry, I forgot to mention what I ordered. I need to stop rambling sometimes. Haha. After looking at the various options on the menu, I decided to order the Bo-Hawg Sandwich with the side of Mac and Cheese.

 

Doesn’t it look so delicious!? Let me tell you, this was some darn good pulled pork sandwich with sausage and cheese on top. Mmmmm. My mouth is watering just talking about it. Can’t wait to go back to Jacksonville again to try some more options on the menu.

Singleton’s Seafood Shack

When you first drive into this place you might judge it from first impression. It truly looks like a shack from the outside but I promise you the food is amazing. The place has an interesting theme inside (mostly random items placed throughout) and has great seating especially if you have a big group. They have a couple of big picnic like tables that can hold about 14 – 16 people.

One of my co-worker’s ordered the smoke fish dip to share with everyone. Omg, this dip tasted so good (sorry I didn’t get a chance to take a picture because everyone wanted to dig in right away). This fish dip is a great appetizer to start out with.

After looking at the menu for a while I decided to get a grilled shrimp taco and an order of hush puppies.

 

It tasted sooooo good! Yummy! Oh, I have to divulge I love hush puppies and these hush puppies are by far the best I ever had! I liked that it had a slight sweet taste to them.

I have to admit that the group and myself liked Singleton’s so much that two days later we went back there again for lunch. LOL. This time I choose to go with one of the lunch specials, grilled shrimp basket with fries and a hush puppy.

 

Once again it was amazing!

Oh, and they have this hilarious hot sauce. From the title of it, I was a little scared to try it. lol.

Volcano Sushi

I was craving sushi so much that hubby finally decided to take me out to a place near the hotel we were staying at. This place was very contemporary and modern. I loved the red booths and seats they had which added a nice vibe to the restaurant.

After looking through the menu I decided to get a Philadelphia Roll (one of my favorite rolls anywhere I go since I love cream cheese) and the other roll I got was called the Rock N Roll No. 2.

 

The Philadelphia roll definitely had very fresh ingredients which is great and tasted good.

The second roll I ordered, Rock N Roll No. 2 was something different. It was a roll with salmon, crab and cream cheese in the middle but instead of seaweed wrapped around with rice they had thinly cut cucumber wrapped around.

I was super impressed on how this roll tasted. Might have to try a few of their other options that offer a cucumber like wrap.

Hubby ended up ordering a Philadelphia Roll (copying me) and the Rainbow Roll.

Overall, this sushi restaurant is a nice place to stop by and enjoy sushi. Oh, and you must try the cucumber wrap sushi rolls since it is unique and delicious.

Golfing

At Windy Harbor Golf Club

If you remember from my last post about Jacksonville, Florida I mentioned that my husband decided to take up golfing. Well guess who also decided to take up golfing? Yes, me! I would have never guessed in a million of years that I will take up golfing. When I was growing up I was always a swimmer and into a few sports but not golfing. I will admit that I always thought golfing was super boring until I actually tried it. I guess you should never judge anything until you tried it yourself.

I bought some cheap women’s starter clubs, golf shoes and golf balls. I spent about $280 total which isn’t a bad price starting out.

Here are a couple of pictures of me golfing. I was having so much fun that I forgot to take more pictures  and take some videos. I promise I will try to remember the next time I go golfing.

I had a blast. My best hole was hole 11 when I got a PAR on a PAR 5. Nice, right? I will admit that I did get worn out by the time we hit the 14th and 15th hole. I toughed it through but it was hard not to show that I was tired. I just need more practice, take lessons and work on doing some strengthening exercises.

At Windsor Parke Golf Club

I decided after my first time golfing that I really need to take some lessons so I can improve. Luckily for me, hubby and I ran into Nikki Martin, a Golf Pro at Windsor Golf Club, while shopping at local golf store. I only took one lesson, but Nikki taught me a lot and improved my golf swing. I am a fast learner so he was able to teach me many golf basics in a course of an hour. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take another lesson this time around since weather seemed to get in the way. I will be back in Jacksonville, Florida again for work so I can plan to take more lessons with him to improve.

Here are videos of hubby and I learning from Nikki Martin on how to hit a golf ball in a bunker:

 

 

Hmmm… just had a thought. I think my next sewing project I should make my own golf club covers! Stay tuned, I might decide to write a sewing tutorial. Hehe.

North Beach Fish Camp

After 5 hours of golfing, hubby really wanted to take me to a nice resturant to unwind and eat some fantastic food.

Today was my lucky day, the resturant recieved fresh Royal Red Shrimp and were serving them in an appetizer. I never had royal reds before so I figured I will try them.

BEST TASTING SHRIMP I EVER HAD! Omg, I felt like I died and went to heaven when eating these delicious royal reds. They were that good! I found out from my husband that it’s really hard to find resturants that serve or haven’t ran out of royal red shrimp. I wonder why? 🤔 Now I know why I have never heard of them before.

(Apparently its a golf coast thing for this type of shrimp, probably why I never heard of it until now).

Hubby ordered baked scallops for his appetizer.

Hubby let me try one and they were super delicious, definitely an alternative appetizer you can get if they don’t have royal red shrimp in stock. Yum!

For my main course I wanted to try crab cakes. Last time I had crab cakes was when my mom made them when I was a kid. I figured trying crab cakes will be a good choice since I like trying new things on travel.

Super delicious! Sorry Mom but these crab cakes were out of this world good. Nice balance of flavors and the crab meat was divine.

Hubby got the grilled salmon.

Hubby said the salmon was on point and tasted great. He said it wasn’t dried out at all which means they cooked it correctly. He said the seasoning was a perfect mix.

Next up, desert! I got the chocolate turiso. Delicious and rich in taste. I was super impressed and the peanuts add the perfext crunch and taste with the chocolate.

By far the North Beach Fish Camp is one of the best seafood restaurants I have been in. Beautiful decor plus the food was amazing. If you ever visit Jacksonville, Florida you have to go here. I do recommend making a reservation just to be sure since they can get busy quick.

SmashBurger

This place is kind of like any fast food burger joint but offer skme interesting options. You kind of can mix and match what you want on your burger or chicken sandwich. It stands out a little bit.

I got the Grilled Bacon Avocado Club with fries.

Tasted pretty good, but the one thing that I didn’t like was that they didn’t tell me they ran out of Avocado and they put guacamole on it. I love guacamole, don’t get me wrong, but it still would have been nice if they would have told me instead of just putting it on my sandwich. What if I didn’t like guacamole? It was still a great tasting chicken sandwich though.

German Schnitzel Haus

A few of my co-workers wanted to go to a German returanut for lunch. I decided to tag along since I never been to a German resturant before and I wanted to try something new.

While waiting for our food, one of the people I went with had some secret skills. She took sweetener packages and built a pyramid out of them.

She has some skills. Lol.

I order the Schnitzel Sandwichwith beer cheese and a Caesar Salad side.

The served my Caesar salad first and it was not the typical Caesar salad I ever tasted.  Instead of croutons they put Spatzle which was surprisingly was really good.

This sandwich had pork fried Schnitzel with beer cheese and served on a pretzel bun. I thought is was good except that since the pork was thin and the pretzel bun was huge it wasn’t really proportional. Meaning, every time I took a bite it tasted more like bun and cheese. I had to remove the bottom bun, then it tasted really good. Oh, this was my first time trying beer cheese and it was amazing! I can’t believe I never heard of it until now.

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Well that is all I have for now. Until my next trip down in Jacksonville, Florida.

 

Thanks for stopping by!