Curated Texan
Rediscover The Simple & Colorful Pleasures At This Beachy Texas Destination
Photography courtesy of Cinnamon Shore
Imagine transporting the family-friendly community fun of the Catskills resort from Dirty Dancing to the Texas Gulf coast? And instead of rustic bungalows, you have pastel colored Texas-sized cottages and not just one dining room but multiple restaurants and pool areas to choose from. Everyone appears happy, carefree, and courteous, and the staff are smiling and attentive, ensuring your vacation is seamless. It’s a community where kids can roam free and parents don’t feel guilty when they have some fun and a daytime beverage. After all, everything at Cinnamon Shore is walking distance or a short golf cart trip away, according to our adventurous traveler, Kristen O’Brien.
As a Northeastern transplant, I likened this cheerful family setting to the summertime innocence of a place like the Kellerman resort in Dirty Dancing. It also transported me back to my happy-go-lucky childhood summers on Fishers Island, a mostly private eight-mile island nestled between the Connecticut coastline and Long Island Sound where kids roamed freely and adults became kids again with multiple beach and golf clubs, and where nobody locks their front door or car, and everyone knows each other. If they didn’t, you could assume they were the weekend houseguest of someone you knew. By the end of my long weekend at Cinnamon Shore in Port Aransas, I’d found my new happy place and left eager to return to make more picture-perfect memories.
The master-planned community, rooted in new urban design (a well-known example of this is Celebration, Florida, initially developed by Walt Disney), broke ground in 2007 and was created by urban planner Mark Schnell of Schnell Urban Design. While the cottages are cohesive in design, featuring gabled rooflines, wrap-around porches, shiplap siding, and sliding barn door-style openings within the homes, they are certainly not cookie-cutter. They come with varying rooflines, styles, colors, and unique names.
The newest sister property is Cinnamon Shore South, which was developed in 2018, and is where homes are still available to build or purchase. The current range is from $595,000 for a one-bedroom to over 4 million for beachfront property. (The Wall Street Journal just wrote about how home prices have grown 155% in the last decade in Port Aransas.) The good news is that you don’t have to buy a home to enjoy Cinnamon Shore; you can easily rent a cottage, condo (1-4 bedrooms), or a beach home (3-8 bedrooms) with your romantic partner, family, or friends. Dogs are also welcome in some of the residences.
What To Expect
All of the palm tree-lined streets lead to what is known as Town Center, with a stage for year-round concerts, built-in games, an ice cream Airstream truck, and an outdoor theater for movie nights. Lisabella’s restaurant, serving coastal cuisine, is also situated there. Nearby Market Street features restaurants such as Shore Café, Dylan’s Pizzeria, and various boutiques. Two new restaurants by Jason Stout are set to open this summer: Stout’s and Tiki Jay’s. There are other restaurants to choose from at both Cinnamon Shore North and South, with more on the way. Other amenities, some come with your rental, others are add-ons, include fire pits for S’mores, a dog park, pickleball and half-court basketball courts, beach cruiser bikes, a fully stocked fishing pond, yoga on the beach, sandcastle building lessons, and of course the beach golf carts to tulle around in.
We enjoyed our cute cart, complete with a turquoise awning and trim, and built-in speakers that we could connect to with our phones, allowing us to sing along and sightsee simultaneously. The carts are also practical for accessing the beach, and the property has built sturdy wooden crosswalks that arch over the dunes, wide enough to accommodate the carts. We also loved that Cinnamon Shore’s friendly staff set up a romantic sunset bonfire for us on the beach, just be sure to book in advance.
We also received daily text messages alerting us to activities available to all residents, the open-air movie schedule, and the most exciting notification we received during our time there—that ‘“Timmy,” a majestic loggerhead sea turtle, along with 11 rehabilitated green sea turtles, will be making their way back home to the Gulf” and we were invited to witness this extraordinary event just steps away from the property. The resort features six pools, with some designated for adults only, while most are family-friendly. Of course, you don’t need to leave the property with all these daily activities, but you can also book excursions directly from the website to go boating, dove hunting, fly-fishing, skydiving, and biplane tours.
Cinnamon Shore is all about creating special memories around holidays, and some of their upcoming summer events include Father’s Day and July 4th. Check here for their full list of seasonal events.
Getting There
While Cinnamon Shore has always been popular with visitors from Houston and San Antonio, there’s been an uptick in vacationers from Austin, Dallas, and beyond. To get to Mustang Island, the 18-mile island of Port Aransas, you can take a free ferry from Corpus Christi across the channel or drive via State Highway 361 across a bridge. You can also fly into Mustang Beach or Corpus Christi Airport. It was an easy drive from Austin for my companion and me, and it was my first time in Port Aransas. I loved the laid-back vibe of the island, where I saw dolphins playing in the Channel, pelicans diving for fish, and the sense that time had slowed down just a little, allowing us to make the most of our getaway.
Our accommodations at Cinnamon Shore were welcoming, comfortable, and cozy, and our cottage, aptly named ‘Off the Clock,’ came with a large tub and luxurious shower, a king-size bed with adjoining balcony, and a downstairs second bedroom with bunk beds for kids. It had everything we could need, from a coffee maker and grill to a Yeti cooler for the beach and even a lovely bottle of wine gifted by the owner. And while we didn’t witness any spontaneous dancing on our weekend away, we certainly could have been accused of having too much fun laughing, singing, sunning ourselves, and cheering on Timmy the turtle.
Learn more about Cinnamon Shore here.
