~Friday~ Joe and I were up by 9:30 in order to have breakfast and to return the rental car by 11:15. We had breakfast at the poolside restaurant and bar, where I had the three-cheese omelet and Joe had the mushroom and Swiss. Good stuff.
We didn’t have to turn in the car at the airport, but rather at a place that rents Alamo, National, and Enterprise cars, which was about 1.5 miles from our guest house. Our plan was to go there, drop it off, and get some exercise walking back.
We made a pit stop at the Wachovia for Joe to get some cash, but he ended up having to go inside due to some error message on the ATM machine. It was starting to take long enough that if we’d have waited for him to finish, the car would be late. So, I drove the car back to the rental place, which was within a mile from the bank.
When I pulled in, which was at about 11:12, and we had to have the car back by 11:15, there were two women being helped. From what I could gather from the tail end of the conversation, they had been in a wreck with their first car and were there to pick up a new one. I laughed out loud at this conversation between the rental car clerk, the lady who was going to be the driver, and presumably the driver’s Lesbian partner.
Rental car clerk (to the driver’s partner while the driver signed and initialed the contract): “You don’t like to drive?”
Driver (about her partner): “No, I don’t like her to drive.”
Rental car clerk (to the driver): “Oh? Is she a scary driver?”
Driver (to the clerk): “Hell, she’s a scary passenger.”
I turned our car in and then started walking back toward the bank (which was in the opposite direction of home) and I met Joe halfway as he’d finished and was walking toward the rental car place. Right after we met, and were walking together, Joe was looking at me and saw something over my shoulder in an empty parking lot:
It’s hard to tell from this picture, but the thing was huge. It was at least two to three feet long.
We had a pleasant rest of the walk back, over the causeway, and other than it being a little on the warm side, it was a nice walk and nice to get some exercise.
Happy hour was fun today. We met Jim and Andrew, a cute couple from Chicago, and three Asian guys Christian, Don, and the third one that I can’t remember.
Our happy hour drink tab came to around $40.00 and after Joe added the tip to it, he added it to the total. When he asked me to confirm that that was a good amount for the tip, I just happened to notice that he’d gone ahead and added the tip into the total bill, which of course we’re not supposed to pay, because all the drinks are free during happy hour.
Whew! Close call! And it also made me wonder if I hadn’t done the exact same thing last night when I closed out the bill. Then, I wondered how often that happens, and if the folks working there corrected it when it did.
We had dinner at the Key West Hard Rock Cafe, sitting on a table out on a balcony overlooking Duval Street, which was nice. We just shared two appetizers: the Grilled Chicken Quesadilla and the Potato Skins. Yummy. Bofum.
We walked down to 801 Bourbon Bar, where we had three or four drinks. Joe mostly stayed inside, and I mostly stood outside drinking my Bourbon and Diet Coke on the sidewalkâpartly because I could, and partly to watch the reaction of scared straight men walking by and trying to (or not to) look into a gay bar.