~Monday~ I was up at a decent hour, considering I was on vacation, and Joe and I had breakfast poolside at the resort restaurant and bar. I had their three-cheese omelet, which is one of my favorites, and some wheat toast, along with some coffee of course.
I worked on catching up my blog for a couple of hours, while Joe laid out in the sun up on the deck. I got Thursday’s and Friday’s entries caught up.
We walked down to Duval in search of some lunch, with intentions of getting a footlong sub at Quizno’s to enjoy half for lunch and to take the other half home for dinner tonight. After walking far enough that we thought we should have passed it, we asked a worker who was sitting out in front of his store if we’d passed the Quizno’s.
“It’s gone out of business,” he said. “They’re opening up a peanut butter place there.” We had just passed a place whose windows were covered in brown paper on which it said something like, “Peanut Butter and WHAT???”
We asked him if he had a recommendation for a nearby place for sandwiches, and he mentioned, “Panini Panini,” which was just ahead on the left, and another place further down on the right. Since Panini Panini was in sight, we went there.
What a nice surprise the place was. Joe and I absolutely loved what we got. I got their:
Antipasti Panini
Roasted Peppers, Fresh Mozzarella, Italian Salami, Roma Tomatoes, Extra Virgin Olive Oil & Balsamic Reduction
and Joe got their:
Italian Mix Panini
Salami, Capicola, Prosciutto & Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto
Their sandwiches were not big enough to make a lunch and dinner out of—that’s our story and it’s sticking to us—so we ate the whole things.
Leaving there, we stepped into a Circle-K convenience store right next door, where a few things of note happened:
- Indicating quite a drunk guy across the street that we could see from inside the store, a guy near us said, “Ooops! He lit a cigarette, and then he slumped ovah.” He pronounced the word “over” like that immediately identifying himself as a New Yawkah.
- Five or so minutes later, when we were cashing out with one of the two cashiers, said guy was in the store trying to buy some alcohol. He stood beside a lady at the other register who was buying a huge bottle of wine, and she said something about not contributing to his drinking and I think she suggested he get some help or do something, because he responded with, “Well, I appreciate your guidance.”
- I guess he did have money, and put something up on the counter to buy, and the cashier that was working that line said, “I’m sorry sir, but I’m not going to serve you alcohol, as you’re already stumbling.” (Of course she had seen him fall “ovah,” too.) He didn’t hear what she said, and she repeated it more loudly, to which he said, “You’re not gonna let me buy? Jesus Christ.”
- Our cashier, who was an older lady, just ignored us looking over at the other cashier with her mouth open. She hadn’t said a word to us when we came up to the register, she didn’t say thank you when we paid, and when we said thank you to her rather sarcastically, she didn’t respond at all. A customer service superstar she’ll never be.
We only bought a couple of things there, as we were going to stop at a grocery store on the way back, where things were most likely going to be cheaper, and it was much closer to where we were staying, so it would be less distance to have to carry the things we bought.
Stepping into this place, called Fausto’s, was sort of like stepping into the Twilight Zone. Lotsa stuff going on in there:
- First of all, the smell. It just didn’t smell good in there, which is not a good situation for a grocery store.
- No sooner had we walked by the cash registers, a man stepped out of the line to one of them, and he said to Joe and me: “Don’t mind my wife harassing you. I’ve been trying to control her for 42 years with no luck.” Alrighty, then. You could tell she was a little embarrassed as she was trying to pull him back toward her.
- We went up one aisle and back down another, which took us back by the cash registers again, and that lady approached us and said, “I’m sorry. He thought you were someone else. We had a playful exchange with two guys a little earlier and he thought you were them.” Thank god that explained that.
- At the deli, we ordered a pound of each of the following: Roasted Peppermill Turkey, Black Forest Ham, Muenster Cheese, and White Vermont Cheddar Cheese. It took the lady an ungodly amount of time to slice all that up, particularly the cheese as she put paper down between each slice so they wouldn’t stick together, which I knew we would appreciate later, but at that time could only think of how much time it added to the task.
- In the line, Joe asked me about how we should pay for our order, wondering if he should get cash back. I said I’d just give him my half in cash since I had a lot of cash, to which the cashier said, “I can give you some cash, but not much. Maybe $50, at the most.” Okay, we were in our own conversation thanks, and we hadn’t asked you for any cash and had decided that we weren’t going to.
Let’s just say we were finally glad to be out of there, and on our way back to the Island House.
We ate the hell out of some of that meat and cheese with sandwiches before we went down to the poolside bar for Happy Hour. We saw the person who joined us, invited, at yesterday’s Happy Hour and we did everything we could to discourage him from joining us again—such as eye contact only long enough to nod and say hello, and then both returning back to our gadgets or to each other to suggest that we were “in the middle of something.” Hint taken. Yay for that.
Toward the end of Happy Hour, we realized that we hadn’t bought any alcohol while we were shopping, and we asked Todd, the bartender with the hottest pits in town—if you go for that sort of thing, and I do—where the nearest place to the resort might be to get some. He told us about a place that where the “dick bar” and the “titty bar” used to be across the street from each other. Men are pigs; gay or straight.
The other thing we asked him was if “Reggie” was still around, and to no one’s surprise he wasn’t. Reggie worked there when we were there back in April, and he spent more time sitting down with the customers, purportedly taking their orders, than he did walking around serving people.
“It’s that time,” our server said when he brought us our Happy Hour tab, about which I retorted, “That’s the sad part of Happy Hour.”
At around 9, we headed down to the gay bars on Duval, starting off in 801 Bourbon Street, and moving into Saloon One, which we which we refer to as “the man cave,” in memory of some very fun straight people we met there a couple of years ago. It’s a matter of leaving one bar (801) and entering the other (Saloon One) through a shared door.
We ended the night back up in the front bar, where we were totally over the bartender, who was more interested in himself than he was his bill-paying customers.
We got back to the Island House at about 11:00, where I lay down for 10 minutes, and woke up at 4:00 in the morning.