The Gasparilla Inn & Club is the idyllic setting for a preppy daydream.

Imagine: Wake in a guest room on the third floor of Grandmother's gigantic, rambling beach house. Run down the wide, hardwood hallway, slide down the banister, slip past the sitting room where the flamingo in the Audubon print presides over a sea of pink-and- green floral chintz and white wicker furniture.

Leap over the golden Lab napping on the front porch, wave to cousins on the tennis court and sail across soft, white sand before diving headfirst into the warm, green Gulf of Mexico.

Like The Breakers on the east coast of Florida, Gasparilla Inn & Club began as an early 20th century destination for the well-heeled who arrived by private boat or railcar.

But unlike The Breakers, with its gilded ballroom and tapestries, the Gasparilla Inn is not grand. Call it preppy chic -- as comfortable as a broken-in pair of Jack Rogers sandals.

And that's just the way generations of guests -- mostly from the Midwest and Northeast, who have come here to unwind with their families since 1913 -- like it.

In the Inn's Pelican Club, a manly billiard room, tarpon scales personalized with messages written by the guests of long ago hang, framed, on the walls. The tradition, now outlawed, was to remove a scale from every tarpon caught.

Fishing is still the main sporting attraction on Boca Grande Island -- known internationally as a tarpon-fishing mecca -- although the Gasparilla Inn & Club has grown to include a Pete Dye-designed golf course, a tennis facility and a spa.

On any lazy afternoon, you can find teenagers playing pingpong on the side porch, ladies playing bridge in one of the sitting rooms and youngsters playing Marco Polo in the pool.

Recently updated decor and a replenished beach area should keep the younger generation coming. Still, it's delightfully Old Guard; Grandfather won't miss a beat.

Info: 800-996-1913; www.the-gasparilla-inn.com. Rates: From $173 in off-season to $365 in winter. Closed July-mid October.

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