Hollywood Beach

One thing we loved about the house we stayed in was the proximity to the beach-we were half a block away from it which was great! Less than a 5 minute walk and there you were! The beach overall was very nice-the sand was a little on the coarse side-lots of broken shells, etc. Not the white sandy beach like Aruba had, but it was pretty decent. And near our house it wasn't crowded at all! Most people there were seniors-you saw a lot of the same people there everyday. We saw the occasional 30 and under group, but it wasn't very frequent. It definitely was nice that you didn't have to fight for beach space, no matter what time you showed up.
This is a picture of the beach area right near our house.

Another beach view-you can see the seaweed more here.
This is looking South-in the very far distance we believe is Miami.

And this is looking North-in the very far distance is Ft. Lauderdale.

Separating the streets from the beach is the really nice boardwalk. There was a decent amount of restaurants and shops along the boardwalk. I would say most places were a pretty good walk from us-we had a few places that were close, but the busy, bustling area was a good 15minute walk from our street. Somewhat of a pain if you wanted to get something, but nice that our area was less crowded. This is the boardwalk near our street looking North:

Gabe and I stopped for a photo along the boardwalk:
The one thing we noticed about the beach is that the water seemed rougher in the morning. By 1pm or so, a sandbar would emerge when the tide went out-which was a great place for the kids to play. The sandbar would last a few hours so typically we would head to the beach later in the day so the kids could play on the sandbar and the water was a little calmer. This is Owen burying Gabe in the sand on the sandbar-he had fun with that!
And here is Bianca on her first beach experience-not sure what she thought of it all! She seemed to have fun playing with everything!

Our only beach mishap was that on our 2nd day there, Owen got stung by a portuguese man of war! He was looking for seashells (his favorite thing to do that week!) and reached out to grab this shiny blue thing and got stung. We all thought he would be traumatized for the rest of the week, but surprisingly he went right back into the water the next day! We were happy for that! This is a photo of a different man of war we saw on our last day at the beach-this one was HUGE compared to the one that stung Owen. The beach was really rough on our last day and this drifted up on the shore-everyone was going over to check it out.