Welcome back! I hope you’re ready to dive in to all the goodness Seaside, FL has to offer. Today we’re going to focus on where to stay.
There is absolutely no shortage of options for where to stay in or around Seaside, Florida. You won’t find many hotels, motels, or B & B’s. What you will find, however, are a plethora of homes to rent.
From quaint cottages:
To 3 story beach-side mini-mansions:
We landed somewhere in the middle:
As I mentioned before, this being a “family” vacation, we couldn’t leave all our furry friends behind. Also, it’s considerably cheaper to pay a pet fee versus boarding them for a solid week (where you know they’ll be lonely and miserable). Taking them with us was far less expensive and offered us all some peace of mind knowing that they’d be tucked in at night in their own crates, right next to their Mom & Dad.
Seaside is a very pet friendly community. We saw dogs out and about everywhere! Sadly, because most of the rentals in Seaside are someone’s personal home, many places opted NOT to be pet friendly. It is understandable. You really don’t know who will be staying in your home, and if they’re bringing a tiny toy dog who sleeps all day or a massive 100lb wrecking ball who chews everything in sight. I get it. So, we quickly discovered that pet friendly rentals narrowed down our list quite a bit.
There’s all the usual home rental sites to use, such as VRBO, Flipkey, Homeaway, or the BIG rental agency in the area is Cottage Rental Agency in Seaside. But we stumbled across a different, local website. We were looking for a 2 bedroom home, close to Seaside, & close to the beach. We opted out of staying directly IN Seaside for budgetary reasons. Rentals were a bit cheaper outside the city. We stayed in a home called Azalea Grove managed by Sunburst Beach Vacations. Erin o’er at Browniebites did a fantastic write-up of the home itself. It was about a mile from the center of Seaside, nestled in a huge thicket of live oaks & magnolias….like a grove, by the Sea! Seagrove!
It was a 15 minute walk, or a less than 10 minutes on a leisurely bike ride to the town square of Seaside. It was less than a 1/4 mile from the pristine white beach. Minutes away from the neighborhood Publix, 3 minute walk to one of Seaside’s famous eats, the Seagrove Village MarketCafé. In short, we lucked out with a fantastic location and we didn’t even know it yet! Don’t worry about “settling” for a rental down here. They are all gorgeous and have their own unique flair. 
(If that last house looks familiar, ask Jim Carrey, he could tell you a thing or two about it)
A common thing you’ll find on many of the houses down here were “Widow’s Walks”, ya know…for the wives to watch out for their husbands to return from seas…..OR – in more modern times – watch the sunset with a cocktail in hand, which, we did. Of course, we did.
Overall, our experience with Sunburst was wholly positive. They were super friendly, very responsive, and even called to check on us a couple of times to see if we needed anything and to make sure our vacation was all that it could be. Talk about customer service! We would highly recommend working with them and will likely book through them in the future!
If you are looking for a place IN Seaside though, Cottage Rental Agency has a fancy map that allows you to click on a home based on where it’s located to see if it’s available. Here is a map from their site showing all of their rentals and the rest of the town.
Thanks for stopping by, stay tuned for more Seaside posts.
Oh, and in case I don’t see ya….good afternoon, good evening, and good night!
P.S. Here’s a friendly clickable bunch of stuff to help your search (all for South Walton Beach area)
- 30A.com (this is a great website dedicated to all things 30a, wonderful for resources & researching the area)
- Sunburst Beach Vacations
- Cottage Rental Agency
- VRBO.com
- Flipkey.com
- Homeaway.com
Ha, I never knew those top decks were called Widow’s Walks – learn somethin’ new every day!