TripAdvisor (SmarterTravel’s parent company) has Anna Maria Island rentals priced well below $1,000 per week. Where to stay: Most accommodations on Anna Maria are vacation rentals or small condo resorts. For dining, you can try affordable local favorites such as the Anna Maria Island Beach Cafe, which is known for its all-you-can-eat pancakes for $5.99, and Star Fish Company, whose dockside restaurant serves up the local catch at surprisingly cheap prices. A free trolley runs up and down the length of the island, making it easy to check out the island’s boutique shops or restaurants. You can snorkel, kayak, or fish in the Gulf’s clear waters, or explore the island’s three small communities: Bradenton Beach, Holmes Beach, and the town of Anna Maria. While doing nothing is the island’s prime pastime, there are plenty of options when you want something to do. It’s an old-fashioned place where you can just relax and hang out on the beach with your kids, without arcades and other distractions.” “It has something other destinations have lost. “My trip to Anna Maria made me feel in a nostalgic sense what beach vacations must have been like 20 or 30 years ago,” says Tim Leffel, author of Make Your Travel Dollars Worth a Fortune, who visited the island with his family. You can rent vacation homes with water views and pools for under $1,000 per week and get seafood entrees at beachfront restaurants for less than $20. And it’s affordable, especially in the summer. In fact, no construction on this seven-mile-long barrier island on Florida’s Gulf Coast is more than three stories tall, and 60 percent of its land is an open beach. The hidden beach destination Floridians escape to, Anna Maria Island has somehow managed to keep condo towers, fast-food chains, amusement parks, and glitzy mega-resorts off its shores. Anna Maria Island, Florida Javier Cruz Acosta/Shutterstock Whether you’re looking for cheap beach vacations in Florida or in other lesser-known states for tourism, this list of hidden and affordable beach destinations on the Gulf Coast will satisfy your desire for sun and sand-without breaking the bank. The following Gulf Coast beach destinations are still unmarred by development, with opportunities for adventure, culture, great food, and, yes, even reasonable prices. Look to the Gulf of Mexico for ultra-soft sand, crystal-clear waters, and surprisingly cheap beach vacations. There must be cheaper beach vacation alternatives, you think-and you’re right, there are. Last summer, when you were sitting in Miami traffic or laying down a month’s pay for a family trip to Maui, you may have wondered if your relaxing beach vacation was all worth it.
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