Interesting first impressions excerpted from the journal of a country singer who recently played a gig in town:

“While touring through Florida last week, we performed at the 1^st Annual Rocktober Roundup Festival located in the town of Ave Maria, FL. I did not know anything about Ave Maria… I was wondering if we would ever find this lost city of Ave Maria. However, just as we began to feel lost we saw a large structure appear from the landscape and it must have been what people felt like back in the day during explorations because to be surrounded by nothing but nature and to see the sign of humanity spring up from the landscape is magical… The people that we met there where all super nice and very accommodating as we began to explore around the city we quickly came to the conclusion that this city was entirely faith-based on the Catholic religion and its roots showed in the architecture with the center piece being the church… On one hand the outside of the church was one of the nicest I have ever laid eyes on. On the other hand the inside was equally as nice as something that one may see in Europe only contemporary and new with awesome stone work and statues… When we rolled out of the town and back into the Florida wilderness that surrounds Ave Maria, I felt like I could have stayed and became a settler of a new township!”