We have come to Siesta Key for the past 8+ years and have always rented 522 Canal Street (the most…read morerented house on the island). When we walked to the beach every morning we always passed Plaza de Las Palmas and wondered what it looked like inside as we always loved the outside. It has a main house with 3 bedrooms and 3 baths, full kitchen, 2 eating areas, laundry area, and a nice pool. In addition, you can rent the cottage separately from the house, which has 1 bedroom, kitchen, laundry area, and full bath. We rented both. From what we understand, if you rent just the cottage (1-2 people) then you would not have use of the pool; there is a small patio in the back of the cottage though...
The house/cottage is 1 block from beach access 8, which will take you directly to the fine, white sand beach on the gulf coast of Florida.
The house has a very open floor plan, which we really like; it says it has cable TV, but we only had local antenna TV. It's stocked with books, games, and a TV in pretty much every room.
The rooms in the house consisted of 1 king bed; 2 twin beds; 1 full bed; and the couch pulled out to a bed. It has a nice fireplace, if you would ever need it. The cottage has 1 queen bed (it looks like a full bed though).
Downsides: kitchen is pretty small and is not a "through" kitchen; it dead ends into a wall. We had 12 people, so not everyone could fit under the same roof to sleep (we rented the cottage too). More expensive than 522 Canal Street when both house/cottage are rented together. Rooms are smaller than 522 Canal Street
Positives: great location, great pool (nicer/cleaner than 522 Canal Street), open floor plan, has a gas grill (huge for us as we grill out a lot), and great lounge chairs at the pool (522 had metal chairs, which were always very hot and easily burned you... these are cloth).
We all agreed that we would chose this house/cottage over 522 Canal for future years... it's closer to the shops in downtown Siesta Key, Daiquiri Deck, beach access, etc. For us it was just a better feel and "fit" our family much better. The parents of the owners live a few doors down, so they stopped down the first day just to make sure everything was okay....
Great pics are on their web site...