Our alarm went off at 9:00, and we made it down to the lobby for the complimentary breakfast by about 9:20. It was quite crowded in the place, and the flow to get your food there just sucks.
The plates are in the tightest corner in the room, and the first thing after the plates is the waffle iron, where people spend the most amount of time — waiting for their waffles to cook, all the while blocking the thing people who aren’t even having waffles need the most to get started — the plates.
We managed to get what we need, and it was a decent, as cheap-as-you-can-get, breakfast.
We sat at the pool for a couple of hours, where the sun moved in and out from behind clouds at different times.
As soon as we arrived, the gazillion kids in the pool decided to play the time-honored, annoying-as-hell game of Marco Polo.
Toward the end of our time there, two kids were left in the pool — unattended — and we expressed our outrage at their parents to no one in particular, and continued to watch as one of the kids pulled a lounge chair to the end of the pool, stood on the end of it (with a foot just itching to slip through one of the plastic slats on the chair causing him to fall over the side of the pool and splat his head against the concrete wall), and dove off. Craziness.
Back at the room, Robert did a crossword puzzle and I blogged, while we listened to some tunes on the iPod.
After that we took a short nap.
At about 5:30, Joe came over and we drove downtown to have dinner at Elijah’s.
We were seated at an outside table, just by the water, but by the time the appetizers arrived, I knew it was going to be too hot to stay seated out there for our entire meal, and asked to be move inside.
We got a cool table just inside the door, where we enjoyed appetizers of calamari, oysters on the half shell, and hot crab dip. Our entries included fish and chips, a shrimp salad, and the mixed grill. We were all pleased with our various selections.
Back at the hotel, we dropped off Joe, and Robert and I changed into walking outfits, drove down to the beach, and had a delightful 45-minute walk along the shore, with a great breeze facing us on the return walk. We walked from Public Access 4 to the Shell Island Resort, and back.
Driving home, we faced the most magnificent sunset. The sun was huge, and so orange.
Back at the room, we showered, enjoyed some watermelon, and Robert watched a little TV while I doctored up the photo of Joe in yesterday’s entry, and devised part of this blog entry.
We left for Costello’s at about 10:15. Talk about the difference between night and day. Tonight, it was butts-to-nuts in the place.
I didn’t recognize either of the bartenders, or the piano player or singer. After a while, Joe reminded me that the singer is the same guy that we saw a few weeks ago when we were in town, and at that time, he sang for a couple of hours, all of a sudden disappeared, and about 15 minutes later came back as a woman to sing a few more songs in drag. For no apparent reason or explanation.
I ran into Andy again, who I ran into last night, but forgot to mention. He used to work for IBM, was in EAGLE, but left a long time ago to be a real estate agent, if I’m not mistaken. I didn’t know he’d moved to Wilmington.
He was drunker, and “friendlier” tonight than he was last night. He said that he and his partner, Charles, were going to Myrtle Beach tomorrow, and I had to resist using brianrdu‘s line, “Oh, you mean that giant turd in the sand that someone stuck flashing lights on?”
At about midnight, I guess, we stumbled on over to Ibiza, where after the “grand tour” of the place for Robert, he and I settled upstairs, while Joe “twirled.”
One of the huge windows was open, and we stepped through it out onto the little wrought iron mesh balcony overlooking the street. After a few minutes, an employee came and asked us to step back in, and closed the window. I’m not sure if we weren’t supposed to be out there, or if they just wanted to close the window to keep the air-conditioning in.
We sat down on one of the couches in that room, next to a straight girl, who was very nice. After a few minutes, this very-large framed black guy came and sat down next to her. He looked like a football player.
She introduced us to him, and as I shook his hand I said, “You are a big hunk o’ man.” They both smiled. Well, he was.
I guess we stayed there about an hour or so, closed our tabs, and then got a slice of pepperoni pizza at, A Slice of Life, a very popular pizza joint right around the corner from Ibiza’s.
Walking back to Costello’s, we once again (just like last weekend) ran into George, one of the co-owners of Costello’s, who was with the piano player from last night, that we all think has had a stroke, due to perceived paralyzed facial movements (or non-movements, as it were, or wasn’t), but still plays piano beautifully.
Just like last week, George asked us how things were at Ibiza’s. “Fine,” we said this time.
We stopped back into Costello’s, where Joe and Robert each had one more beer, and I had a glass of water.
This one strange guy, who had followed Joe back to the bar from outside, sat down at the bar next to Robert, and persisted in trying to make conversation with our group. Poor Robert caught the brunt of it, or he may not have even minded it for all I know. All I know is that I was glad to not to have had to deal with him.
All of us made it back safely to our hotel. It was a festive night.