Personal Post: Our trip to Europe, Days 1 & 2 - Drugs Are Not Always My Friend

So! On October 25, we traveled to Europe to be in London for our wedding anniversary, and then Paris for my birthday.  We have never been to Europe together.  Jeff's family traveled extensively, and I lived in London during my late teens/early twenties before I was deported.  Long story.  We were total tourists; had sent me two Rick Steves guides for my birthday. Jeff had one or the other with him at all times, and we weren't afraid to stand on the street going "buh?" as we found our way around.

We flew on Virgin Atlantic.  Since I despise flying, I insisted we book Premium Economy, which is worth EVERY PENNY.  Large leather seats, more legroom, everything free.  If we were drinkers we would have made out like bandits.  It's probably their equivalent to Business Class, which we've never flown.  Also individual tvs and great meals on plates with real utensils. When we boarded, we were offered free champagne, but we chose orange juice instead.  Rather than the red eye, we decided to spend Saturday traveling, leaving around 7 AM and getting in somewhere around 8. Don't ask me--I was so bombed on drugs I could have been in New Jersey.  We checked in at the Windermere Hotel on Warwick Way, south-west London near Victoria Station. The underground looked EXACTLY the way I remembered it.  The entire street was hotels!  This photograph is not mine; it shows the front of the hotel.



Our room was at the very top.  I knew European hotel rooms are tiny, so I reserved a "superior double."  Look at all of that space to luxuriate in!


The door is about a foot away, and there is a teeny shelf called a "desk".

The bathroom had a skylight!!  It felt like the height of luxury.  The one problem was that there were no bars in the shower, so Jeff had to help me in and out.  Our view was of the council housing (in New York, housing projects for the poor) outside.  I smashed into the bed while Jeff went for a walk around the hotel.


Sorry for the blurriness.  You can see the council housing behind the hotel

Jeff's pictures are much sharper; I might have to snag them off Facebook.  Anyway, you can see the council housing behind us.  We're in the tiny rooms on the top.

There was a little restaurant below ground.  Every morning they offered a "full English breakfast": eggs, ham, bacon, sausage, grilled tomato, mushrooms and baked beans.  There was also a little buffet of cereal and fruit salad.  We did mixes of the English breakfast every morning.  Except you couldn't pay me to eat the baked beans.  I ate beans on toast and spaghetti on toast constantly when I lived there.

Our first day, we arranged to meet a friend of Jeff's at a traditional restaurant called Brown's, which has locations all over the place.  We wanted the roast and Yorkshire pudding.  I should warn you now, there are no pictures of food.  We got hopelessly lost, and were extremely late. Andrew, Jeff's friend, was too damned gracious!  I kept insisting they sit next to each other, because it was so loud.  Andrew was so polite, "oh, no, no, you stay right there."

What Andrew didn't know was that I was still drunk from the drugs.  Shortly after this picture was taken, I fell asleep at the table!  Even THEN Andrew insisted I sit between them!  The food wasn't very good.  I wanted the pork roast, which they were out of, so I had chicken. Jeff said his mother made much better Yorkshire pudding. After that we ate at ethnic restaurants or suggestions from the guidebook.


Yours truly, about to faceplant into the Yorkshire pudding

I had to ask Jeff what we did for the rest of the day. He says we went to Covent Garden, which I have no memory of. We walked all day, so I was happy to smash into the bed again. As an American, I'm slightly grossed out by there being a white bottom sheet and a large white duvet with no top sheet. It was the same in both hotels. Why? Especially with the high stain risk?

Glad to finally get this posted!!!!

What We Did On Our Winter Vacation: Florida, Part Four: Bern's Steakhouse

I realized that I never finished this series of posts, and this is the last one.  The only scheduled activity we had was dinner at Bern's Steak House in Tampa.  Again, I didn't take my camera, so I snitched these from the Internet.  This is a legendary restaurant, said to have formerly been a bordello.  The entrance and most of the dining rooms sure look like it.

On entering, you walk into a red wallpapered foyer with way too many ornaments and a huge gold staircase, which is not used.  On the right hand, one of the dining rooms.  Each dining room is fairly small and decorated differently.  And has a different name: "The Rhine Room," "The Florentine Room," and "The Bronze Room."  The latter is the largest, decorated with bronzes from the owner's collection.  Our room was tiny, and we sat in the corner.



The menu is extraordinary.  Of course the big attraction is every cut and variety of steak you can imagine.  Much of the menu is a guide to steak.  Even so, we needed a waitperson (in suit and tie; the busboys dress in short white jackets) to help guide us to what we wanted.  We intended to order a Delmonico steak after reading a few reviews, but after carefully explaining to the waitperson what we each liked in a steak, she advised us to order a Chateaubriand, 17 ounches (7 for me, 10 for Jeff), on the rare side.  When she brought it to the table, she brought a platter that cooked Jeff's steak some more.

From previous experience, I knew not to order appetizers, eat from the bread basket, or the French onion soup.  I did all that the first time we went there and couldn't eat more than a few bites of steak.  A $50 steak does NOT taste as good out of a motel room fridge the next day! 

The meal was incredible.  The steak was more than incredible.  Soft, tender, crisp crust...gah...We were surrounded by large raucous groups of businessmen and some couples.  Bern's has a dress code: jackets and ties for men, dressy dress for the women.  Nonetheless, there were a number of people in beach-casual gear. Upstairs they have the Harry Waugh dessert room, in which dozens of small booths are built like wine casks.



The desserts aren't impressive.  My opinion is that the majority are designed for tourists, because they're so overly artsy.  Or enormous (the bread pudding was downright scary).  But we were having such a good time it didn't matter.  One large room lined with booths has a miserable piano player in the center.  Last time it was empty except for us.  This time it was completely empty.  The piano player looked just as miserable.  Every musician we saw in Florida had a "I hate my life" expression.  There were cognacs that cost $1200 a glass.

That's pretty much it for Florida.  We flew back to cold, raw New York and real life.  It was a fantastic vacation in every way.   Fletcher was hysterically glad to see us.  The cats, as usual, lifted their heads and looked at us as if to say, "Oh, you're back?  Do you want us to show you where the catsitter left the can opener?"

What We Did On Our Winter Vacation, Part Three: Sand Sculptures

Sorry I'm so lame about posting this stuff in timely fashion, but that's how it this.  This entry is about the sand sculpture contest that had been held two weeks earlier.  Sand sculptors from all over the world come and create amazing sand structures.  Some were blobby, but others were amazing in their intricacy.  I could see them from our room.  I'm only sorry that I didn't get a picture of the colored lights around each sculpture and the early morning lights along the boardwalk.  It was incredibly beautiful. Here is the sponsors' sculpture, which of course had to be done first:



Next, this is a sculpture that seemed creepy but okay... Closer...

AAAAYEEEEEE!!!!

Somehow after that soul-curdling experience, the other sculptures weren't quite as scary impressive.



As you can see, the beach was incredibly wide.  Jeff estimated the distance from the hotel to the water at half a mile. This was one of the views from our room to the water, with the sculptures visible.



The yellow things are "cabanas."  Basically covered beach chairs, available at an exorbitant rent.  This was one of the days we spent lying around the hotel. Next up, Berns Steakhouse, which is in a former bordello!  I'll try to get to it in more timely fashion.

What We Did On Our Winter Vacation, Part Two: Snakes and Stripping

As our vacation recedes from my memory, I know I have to keep writing before it vanishes altogether!  Not only that, the hideous low temperature had me longing for those beaches again!

We went to a street fair. I thought it would be the usual boring tents, so I left my camera in the car.  (I don't know how to download photos from my phone.)  MISTAKE!  There was a phenomenal tent for Matthews Wildlife Rescue. He seems to be a one-man operation with volunteers.  Based in Bradenton, he specializes in rehabilitation and pest control.  He had a variety of animals on display, including a huge owl.  He re-nests fallen chicks (apparently the "human smell" is a myth).  When he found this owl chick, it had a broken wing.  He nursed Marvin to health, and now he's the owl's "mother".  There was a big sign, DO NOT TOUCH THE OWL.  Its claws have 300 lbs. of crushing power.

There were, of course, a number of other animals on display.  These are taken from his website, since I DIDN'T BRING MY GODDAMN CAMERA.



This iguana jumped off the table when a snake was given lettuce. Justin put it back on the table and gave it some lettuce.  It was tethered to the table.  What was great to see was how easily he handled the animals.  He showed us a tiny screech owl.  There was a picture of a fawn who can't handle being in public.

For me, the best was a HUGE, movie-sized python.  For $5, you could hold the snake.  I love snakes, so I ponied up.  He moved my hair, then placed the snake across my shoulders.  I was holding its head in one hand, and Justin told me to keep him away from my face.  The snake twined around my right leg. One woman was virtually screaming, her hands over her mouth.  Here's a funny website photo.  You can't really see how big the python is.  Have to say I had tight shoulders, and have a fuckton of python on my shoulders was really pleasant.



It's actually bigger now.  The woman who was freaking out was saying, "How can you touch that thing?"  Jeff doesn't like snakes, but not to that extent.  I would urge folks reading this to send donations to Justin Matthews.  He does presentations for schools, teaching kids to respect animals.

Jeff went into this incredible shell store to buy a gift for his sister.  The owner was an old coot, who took me through dozens of shells.  There was a family with a large beaded dragon lizard on the son's shoulder.  He put the dragon on my shirt.  "If he shits on me, I'll have the honor of wearing dragon poop," I said. 

We went to a wheatgrass stand.  Jeff loves the stuff.  I tried some, and proceeded to have a toddler-level attack of EEYUW BLECH!  I ran to a fudge stall and wolfed down several samples.  Then I had to buy a package of maple fudge (go ahead, twist my arm).

From there, we drove to a St. Petersburg beach.  The water was PERFECT, and there was a swimmer in the ocean.  I started tearing off my clothes, the way I had in Miami a few years ago, when I raced into the ocean in my bra and panties.  Jeff sat on a blanket, trying to figure out what he'd tell the police.  This time, he came racing down the beach, yelling "You promised!  You promised!"  So I put my clothes back on, and bust out crying.  It felt like wanting a drink, that's how intense it was. 

But the air was too cold, we had no towel.  Thank God, Jeff started laughing and put his arms around me when we walked back to the car.  As he said the other time, "you are never boring".   I couldn't stop crying.  I wanted the ocean.  Thank God our hotel had a pool. Next installment sooner, I promise!!!

What We Did On Our Winter Vacation: Treasure Island, Florida

Sorry, gang, I kept attempting to write this, but I had so many other things to avoid work on I got sidetracked.  Then yesterday I edited pics for my FB album.  I'd made a rough list before we left of what we had done, otherwise it was going to be all a sort of blur with palm trees.  Like a Jimmy Buffett concert.  And don't think we didn't have to listen to a lot of poor bastards singing "Margaritaville" in the ensuing days.

We flew out of Newark, NJ to Tampa airport on Thursday night, December 13th.  As always with planes, I was drugged out of my mind on xanax and some kind of anti-psychotic.  I react very badly to anti-psychotics.  This one caused "heavy sedation". BINGO!  I don't remember a damn thing, although I'm told that while waiting for the plane we ate pizza and cheesecake.  I actually bought a coat specifically to go to and from the airport! It was 50% off, dammit.  Long, cobalt blue, with a fake fur collar and cuffs.  I felt like Ginger Rogers until I took the pills.

We picked the Bilmor Resort and Hotel, specifically because of its cheesy 50s vibe.


(I didn't take this picture, as you can probably tell)

It's on Treasure Island, an island part of the city of St. Petersburg.  The area is mostly a long strip of hotels and bars.  We didn't care, because our main goal was to do lots of lovely nothing.  We achieved our goal. The hotel faced the Gulf of Mexico, and there was the biggest public beach I have seen in years.  It was about half a mile to the water!


(I didn't take this picture, either)

We got another handicapped room, which had a peephole at crotch height, presumably for folks in wheelchairs.  Remember, my crotch is higher than most peoples'.  It was on the first floor at the quiet end of the hotel, and had a back glass sliding door onto a little "porch."  Also a screen door, so we could open the door in the morning and let the breeze in.


Me, the morning after we arrived.  At least I'm not drooling.





Jeff on our "porch"

Every morning this guy had to rake the sand between our hotel walk and the slight rise to the palm trees.  Every single morning, he came out with a rake, raked the sand sideways, and then in perfect lines perpendicular to the walkway.  After five minutes people would come out of their rooms and wreck it.  One morning Jeff gave the raker $10.  The man was flabbergasted.

Honestly, we were both exhausted and emotionally spent.  The temperature was in the 70s, not as hot as Jeff wanted.  But back home it was 21 degrees and stormy, which made him feel better.  It was so wonderfully luxurious to lounge in those white sheets, no deadlines, no animals, no anything.  We'd agreed not to talk about anything.  And I do mean anything.  Just be in the moment and enjoy ourselves.  This worked beautifully.  The trip was more romantic than I could have dreamt, but if you think you're getting any details, don't worry. 

Jeff spent hours on the "porch", reading.  We didn't have a computer and our cellphones were packed away.  Bliss.

We had bought breakfast food to eat in the room, but Jeff had a craving for Waffle House.  It always hits him when we go anywhere near down South.  We walked through an uber-touristy area called Johns Pass.  Every other store had a name like Tiki Surf Shop, Seashell Jewels by Nyota, or Shore Clothtique (I kid you not).  The bars were often either tiki or mariner themed.  One nearby was named It's Five O' Clock Somewhere!. 

Most nights we ate at the hotel restaurant, Sloppy Joes, where we watched the other patrons get sloppy drunk.  The food was excellent.  Almost all of the fish was fresh.  I will never like fish tacos--they are a food abomination--but Jeff loved them and ordered them at almost every meal.  Sloppy Joe was represented by a picture of Ernest Hemingway, which I never understood.  The patrons were probably all too illiterate to know who Hemingway is. ("Is that the guy with a million cats around his house or something?")


"Wasting away, today, in Margaritaville...thanks, remember to tip your servers"

We spent all of Saturday around the hotel.  This time there were two poor bastards singing Jimmy Buffett, one at Bazzie's, the breakfast restaurant at the other end of the hotel (and later in the evening, a sad deserted bar), and another guy at the next hotel
 down, the Thunderbird.



The only thing we had scheduled in advance was dinner at Berns, a storied steakhouse in Tampa. About which more later.


The Gulf side of the Bilmor. 

There had been a sand sculpture contest two weeks before.  Also about which more later.

Jeez, I can't believe I wrote something personal on this thing again!