A Grande Holiday

THE GASPARILLA HAS CELEBRATED 100 CHRISTMASES IN TRUE OLD FLORIDA STYLE INN & CLUB MORE THAN

- MARY SHANNON HODES

There are no commercial flights to Boca Grande, Florida, and there probably never will be.

Arriving on Gasparilla Island by car offers the first lesson in how you will spend your time there-in low gear. Normally, moving at 35 miles per hour would feel like steering through molasses to me, but driving into the village, I actually wanted to dip below the speed limit. 

I felt a tingle in the air, something charged but relaxed at the same time, and it immediately seemed disrespectful to race onto the golf cart-laden streets. I'm not the only one who feels that way.

Tina Malasics, operations assistant and unofficial historian of The Gasparilla Inn & Club, has been making this drive on her daily commute since 1984. "I come over the bridge in the morning and just feel a change, you know?" she says.

In keeping with the inn's signature aesthetic, even its location is subdued but elegant. It doesn't sit on the main road. You won't see lavish gates or any loud signage announcing that you've arrived. The building (painted a soft, buttery shade of yellow) is unimposing but stunning. "You just feel an immediate sense of 'ah, "Malasics says with an exaggerated exhale.

In the early 1900s, the owner of the Charlotte Harbor and Northern Railroad decided to build The Gasparilla Inn & Club for railroad executives. But after the original structure was expanded for hosting travelers and the decor was updated for a reopening in 1913, the rooms stayed mostly vacant, which is where one of Malasics' favorite anecdotes about the inn begins.