The Holiday

Ladies,

I would like to start off my mentioning how amazingly tired I am right now. I did not sleep well at all last night due to overexposure to the sun yesterday morning and woke up at 2:13am for no particular reason this morning. My eyeballs are trying really hard to close even though I keep telling them to stay open and my mind is spinning around like the top at the end of Inception.

Good movie.

Yup.

So, I went on a vacation this past week and it was lovely. It was in the 80s every day (I don’t think in Celsius when south of the border so you’ll have to look it up) and completely sun-tastic. Each morning was begun by a scrumptious breakfast and a walk on the beach. If that isn’t one of the best ways to start your day I’m really not sure what qualifies. Most often the scrumptious breakfast was had at our hotel (the plural is my family and I). They had a waffle iron that just begged to be used so I had several delicious waffles for breakfast.

As lovely as the hotel breakfasts were (and they actually were) there was one breakfast that was rather special. Can you guess why?

IHOP.

International House of Pancakes.

You ladies know that I’ve been heading down south in the States almost every winter season of my life and so it shouldn’t be such a surprise to know that I’ve developed some traditions during that time. One of those is always going to IHOP. When I was younger I had one order that I would always get and that was the chocolate chip Funny Face pancake. Now that I’m older and more respectable there have been some changes in my habits but what did I order when I was at IHOP on Thursday morning? That’s right, a Funny Face pancake!

(My order was actually the Pick-A-Pancake Combo and, of course, I picked chocolate chip pancakes. Just as the waitress was about to leave I said “It would kind of make my day if the whip cream on my pancakes made a smiley face…” and when my pancakes grinned up at my from my plate my day, needless to say, was most definitely made.)

So, after breakfast we went for a walk on the beach.

The beach in Bonita Springs is a pretty good walk. The walking part of the beach actually extends south to Naples and probably North to some other city but it takes a while to make a trek that long, especially when the sun is so hot. My family usually walks along the beach just within the range of the waves and they laugh at me when I get my feet wet for the first time because the water feels cold and I make like a sandpiper and scurry up the sand away from the water. I think that I have a perfectly normal reaction to cold water on my feet but that doesn’t stop any giggles.

The general routine we fell into was walking one hour up the beach and one hour back to where we had parked. It was funny because we’d be walking on one angle for the first hour and then it became a little difficult to switch our feet around when we turned around.

Why does it feel like it should be midnight when it’s only 8:00pm? Why?

One thing I absolutely love to do on the beach is play volleyball. Indoor court volleyball just doesn’t hold the same appeal. Something about the sun beating down on your back, the sand that gets everywhere as you dive for the ball and the people that play beach volleyball completely trumps indoor court volleyball.

Right beside the main parking for the Bonita Springs beach is a beach volleyball court. It tempted me every day until one morning there was a ball sitting in the court. As soon as I saw it my fingers practically itched to touch it. The famiglia went and got drinks and while we were sitting and enjoying a little bit of shade a guy got up and started hitting the ball into the net a few times and that was the last push I needed so I went out there and we chatted and passed for a while which was a lot of fun.

Here I would like to mention something I’ve noticed that relates directly to this incident.

I’m rather good at attracting 25-29 year old American men.

This guy that I met on Thursday is an example. He was probably 27. When I was in the Dominican Republic for Christmas a few years ago I had two guys that hung out with me all afternoon and then until 8:30 at night playing beach volleyball. Those two were 26 and 28. They were kind of hanging on my every word by the time I headed in that night, making enquiries about when they would see me again and if I was going to be at such and such a place at some time. I quite enjoyed the attention but it was a little bit strange to me, being only 17 at the time. I was jail bait and they knew it but that didn’t stop the flirty small talk.

Maybe I should start playing to my strengths…

That was my general morning for the past week and it was glorious.

The afternoons were somewhere between shopping and naps and swimming in the pool. I brought home a bunch of loot because my family has developed professional shopping habits. I was well rested, until today, because of slow paced days and the lack of alarm clocks in the morning. I proved that I’m still a tiny part fish as I swam in the hotel pool as the cotton tops looked on and frowned at my sister’s cannon ball (to be fair the majority of the cotton tops watching were cheering her on and then jokingly complained when she didn’t managed to hit them with the splash).

The food around Naples is superb. I had a food baby several nights after dinner but I was not about to complain about it when that food baby had tasted sooooooooooooooooooooo good! The orgasm steak was certainly the best but there were a few close runner-ups and that’s saying something. If you like to eat out when you travel Fort Meyers/Bonita Springs/Naples is a great place to be.

In short (or long if you read the whole post), I had a fabulous time this week.

Much love ladies,

Dina