We woke up with the roosters on Friday morning for one last time and watched the sun come up during our cab ride to the airport. Once again there was a delay at Bahamasair while the two employees worked for over half an hour to try to book a flight for the guy in front of us. They gave us the finger one last time on the way back to Florida: they didn't offer us anything to drink, but the stewardess mixed something for herself and sipped it in the back of the plane. At least we did have a $30 voucher to spend at the Fort Lauderdale airport that Bahamasair had offered us after the initial screwup, so we went to the food court Sbarro's for pizza and chocolate cake.
We checked into a hotel in a much better area of Fort L. and spent the whole day exploring the Riverwalk and Las Olas region of the city until we were all tired and sore. It was a nice touristy part of town bordered by a very sketchy part of town. I'm not a big fan of tourist stuff, so I took my wife out into the real city. We came around one corner to see a guy sitting handcuffed on the sidewalk w/ his back to the wall, surrounded by cops. Also there was a maniac going nuts honking his horn and screaming at a traffic light, who then made a U-turn and stopped in the middle of the road. I don't know what his problem was. Another person suddenly tried to go through a red light and hit the brakes in the middle of the intersection. All this happened while we were waiting to cross the street, which encouraged us to be really alert in the crosswalk.
Our task for the day was to find a restaurant at which to celebrate my birthday. I looked at the menus and wine lists of half the joints on Las Olas. Some were too expensive, some were just nothing special, one was too snooty, and most of them were really similar. Homogenization of the American Dining experience at work. We've got a hundred restaurants here and you can order the same thing in every one. We ironically chose a place called Panini Noodle (which give me a break, what a terrible name), that itself is not unlike my beloved Pizza Lucé in Minnesota: young servers dressed in black comparing tattoos,* exposed wooden beams in the ceiling, and sleek lighting and ambiance.
I ordered a glass of Cavit Pinot Grigio (which is a good value Italian wine) along with my panini dinner, and since my parents were paying, a slightly pricey Port for dessert. The four of us (minus my little brother, who would have thought it was gross anyway but had already gone into the cool shop next door) shared a crème brûlée. We were all sick of walking and flagged down a cab to take us back to the hotel.
I was craving a Dunkin' Donuts the whole time we were in Florida. My mom thought she had seen one nearby during her walking, so we got out the phonebook to try locating it, which turned into quite an ordeal. I called the front desk and asked where the closest one would be. She gave me an address, which means nothing to me, so I asked how to get there on foot. She responded with a smug chortle. "Well," she snuffed, "you're not going to walk, are you? It's two miles away!" Discouraged, but not defeated, I went down to the computer room by the hotel lobby and posted this after hitting up the Dunkin' Donuts website and finding a store just three blocks away. I walked over with J the next day and sure enough, there it was. The whole trip took twenty minutes and I got a half-dozen of my favorite donuts. Krispy Kreme can suck it, Dunkin' Donuts is the bomb.
Going through security, a supervisor told me I couldn't take my box of donuts on the plane, and actually grabbed it away from me. It turned out he was joking, but seriously, I get searched and hassled by enforcement types so often that I didn't even say anything. There's no point in arguing with people who have guns. I guess J. could see the disappointment on my face, though. "He's about to cry," she told the guy as he handed the box back and called me gullible. It was true, and I was angry with myself for not demanding that he give them back, but like I said before it wasn't the first time that I'd been singled out and I wasn't going to make a stink about donuts. Mostly I was damn glad to get my donuts back.
But and so but then we exchanged our tickets for a couple of seats right behind first class, which afforded us excellent leg room, a happy ending after all. I was paranoid about my donuts for the rest of the day, ended up eating them all, and felt pretty sick the next morning. THE END.
*I glanced over as a girl was covering up the intricate colorful work on her shoulder, and her coworker rolled up his trouser leg to show off an old-school ship on his calf which I couldn't get a good look at even though I craned my neck and leaned across the table so much that J. asked what in the world was wrong with me.
Categories: travel
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wine
