Destin & Miramar Beach, Fourth of July, the Best Salsa, and the Jellyfish I'll Never Forget
A Fourth-of-July week on Florida's Emerald Coast with Nicholas, white quartz sand and emerald water, the best salsa I've ever had, a cinnamon-roll French toast we now chase across the country, fireworks on the beach, and my first (excruciating) jellyfish sting.
A week on the Emerald Coast with Nicholas over the Fourth of July, sugar-white sand, that unreal green water, and a couple of food discoveries we’re still chasing. Also: I met my first jellyfish. It did not go well.
Why they call it the Emerald Coast
Destin was Nick’s idea, really, he and his friends used to come here all the time, so when we were deciding where to go, this was the easy, beloved answer, and I’m so glad it was. We posted up at Miramar Beach, just east of Destin, and the nickname is not marketing fluff, the sand here is nearly pure quartz, washed down from the Appalachians, so fine and white it squeaks, and on a calm sunny day the Gulf goes this jewel-toned emerald green, the water so clear you can see straight down through it. It’s genuinely a very cool town. The simplest, best thing we did all week was just walk the beach together, over and over. That’s it. That’s the memory. Nicholas and me, the green water, miles of white sand. My photos pile up hardest around July 7th, over a hundred frames in a day, so that was clearly our deepest day in it.
The food we now drive across states for
Two finds on this trip earned permanent status.
First, Mezcal Mexican Grill in Miramar Beach, which served what I will go on record as the best salsa I have ever had. I don’t say that lightly. I think about that salsa.
Second, and this one became a whole thing, Another Broken Egg Cafe, where we discovered their Cinnamon Roll French Toast. We fell so hard for it that when we found ourselves in Kansas City much later, we sought it out and had it again, and it was just as fantastic. (Fun fact I learned afterward: the chain started as a little “Broken Egg” café in Mandeville, Louisiana in 1996, and the Destin location came along so soon after that it took the name “Another Broken Egg.” So we basically found it close to its roots.) That French toast is now a permanent entry on our map of the country.
The pier, and the sharks
We went out and walked the Okaloosa Island Pier, which juts more than a thousand feet into the Gulf. People fish off it, we watched folks reeling in lines, including some kids fishing, which was its own kind of great, and looking down into the water we could see sharks cruising below. There’s something thrilling about standing out over the open Gulf watching the life move underneath you.
The jellyfish (a cautionary tale)
And then there’s the part of the trip my nervous system will never forget: I got stung by a jellyfish for the first time. At first I didn’t even know what had happened, I just felt something slimy brush my leg, like some gross piece of seaweed. And then, a beat later, it was as if someone had injected needles into my leg everywhere at once. The pain was unreal. I genuinely didn’t know what to do, so I just sat there on the beach, grinding my teeth, riding it out, letting my body deal with whatever was happening to it. I sat there as long as I possibly could.
For the record, because I clearly had no idea at the time, the actual move is: rinse with sea water (never fresh water, which makes it worse), pick off any tentacles, and then soak the area in hot water for a while to break down the venom. I did approximately none of that. I just suffered beautifully on the sand. Now I know.
A chill Fourth, and a neighbor named Stompy
For all that it was the Fourth of July weekend, this wasn’t a fireworks-chasing kind of trip. It was more about hanging out and chilling, relaxing, eating well, putting our feet in the water, doing basically everything you’d want to do in Destin at an easy, unhurried pace. That was the whole point, and it was perfect.
The one thing that tested my patience was our Airbnb, a condo with a serial offender living directly above us. All day, and even at night, this person seemed to do nothing but run around upstairs, a relentless thunder of footsteps over our heads. By the last night I’d had it, and I’d given them a name: “Stompy.” I was so thoroughly sick of Stompy. Every trip needs one tiny villain, and Stompy was ours.
The takeaway
The Emerald Coast gave us the simplest pleasures, walking that green-water beach with each other, and a couple of edible discoveries that have outlived the trip by years. It also gave me a searing, full-body lesson in respecting the ocean. I’d go back in a heartbeat. I’d just watch the water a little more carefully on the way in.