The Vacation Chronicles: Service With A Smile...

This is the post where I give all the details of the awesome sex we had in that big bed while on vacation....

No, wait, come back, I am only kidding!!!

Lol..

This is the post where I talk about all the freaking food we ate in the span of 2 and a half days lol.

As I mentioned before, the hotel gives you a complimentary breakfast for each night you stay at the hotel. Last year we only stayed one night, did not get to the hotel until late, and had already eaten dinner, so we did not eat at Caroline's that night, but we did have breakfast the next morning.

This time, we ate the first night at Caroline's and omg, it was soooo good! I do not have tons of pics for this entry, as they were all taken with Jack's cell phone, since I did not want to wig people out by taking their pics while stuffing their faces lol. But Jack managed a few covert ones which I will share.

That first night, we started off with a hot crab dip appetizer, on their homemade French bread, which was rich and so good. We followed that with a salad with their homemade bleu cheese dressing, which was spectacular. I got the crab stuffed grouper, paired with their mashed new potatoes, Jack got pan seared grouper also with the potatoes, and they brought out a huge basket of their homemade rosemary bread. That bread was a first for me, and when they walked by me the smell was amazing and the taste was out of this world. I actually took the leftover bread back to the room with me, it was that good. Even though we were both about to kill over, we were so full, we had to have the whole experience and I ordered us a creme brulee to share for dessert. Totally divine.

We could hardly breathe by this point, so we walked around the town a few times ( which is when I found The Honey Hole originally ) to aid in digestion, but I still sat up half the night feeling like a beached whale. SO worth it though!!

The next morning we went down for breakfast, ans let me tell you, their free breakfast is not a few bagels or some eggs and toast. You get to pick from these choices:

French Toast made from their French bread, three HUGE pieces of it, with your choice of bacon, patty sausage, or a thick slab of ham.

Continental Breakfast which is eggs, same choice of meat as above, toast, and grits with fresh fruit garnish.

Shrimp and grits, which are self explanatory, paired with toast and eggs and fruit garnish.

Sausage Gravy and Biscuits, which were HUGE, and those came with eggs to I think, and garnish.

I think there was something else, but I can not remember off the top of my head.

The first morning I got shrimp and grits, which were awesome, and Jack got the Continental breakfast with the ham slab lol. They give you fresh squeezed orange juice ( which I gave to Jack, as pulp makes me freak out ) and coffee for both and milk for me.

After breakfast we took another short walk ( me without my damn camera ) before we retired back to the hotel to shower and...stuff...lol. *Side note: Took a shower with Jack and stayed in LONG after he got out, endless hot water is a rare treat and I did not want to get out lol.*

Later that afternoon we decided to drive towards Panama City and see if we could find somewhere to eat that was not at the hotel or in one of the smaller local shops, which were PACKED on a Saturday afternoon already. We drove through Port St. Joe, Mexico Beach, and a few other teeny beach towns, and then we drove through Tyndall Air Force Base where I got to see some cool planes, but did not get a good shot to take a pic since we were on the move with traffic behind us.

Finally we end up in Callaway, which is basically the outskirts of Panama City, and we drove by several places, stopped at Helen Back but we did not want to hang out at a sports bar ( I typed bra the first time lol ) and we drove on a ways and saw this MASSIVE sign that said "Black Angus" with a cow silhouette on it. We figured it for a steak house and pulled in, right as they were opening. Well this was no regular steakhouse lol. My cam had died at this point ( I had taken all the pics till then on one charge, including the ocean pics on the way to Callaway ) but this was a fine dining place for sure. It was HUGE, it had like 6 large dining rooms, and several smaller dining rooms, it was like a maze!  I got lost going to the bathroom, had to be shown back to my table lol. We were the only people in our medium sized, glass walled, full huge wrap around bar on other side of the room, dining room, in a darkened corner. Our waiter was this tall, thin, willowy pseudo-French, pencil thin mustache ( Jimmy Buffet would have been proud ) man who was very attentive. He was also amusing to me.

We made the waiter go awwww when we ordered, because when he asked us what we wanted, we both answered the same, at the same time, which was the 16 oz sirloin and half a lobster tail. When he asked how we wanted it cooked, we both said medium rare at the same time, we both wanted the baked potato, and when he asked what dressing, we both said bleu cheese at the same time, followed by we both wanted sweet tea. He giggled like a school girl at all this lol. If any of you have ever seen the Big Lebowski, the part where The Dude goes to visit Maude Lebowski after his attack, there is a French man in her apartment, tall, thin, thin mustache, high pitched voice...that was our waiter! He looked JUST like him, and had the same mannerisms and laugh, it was a riot!

Well after he brought our food, which was heavenly, the bleu cheese dressing there was SO good I almost teared up, I took a bite of my lobster tail. This was my first time having real lobster, and I am sorry to say it was icky. I like the fake stuff, surprisingly, but the real deal was very...bleeeeh. Jack just laughed at me as he took mine off my plate and ate mine too lol. The steak and potato and salad and SOURDOUGH bread were amazing.

The waiter got upset however, because he kept coming to the table to refill my tea, but Jack had not drank enough of his to need a refill. He never does, he drinks after he eats usually, very seldom during. Well this caused the waiter distress and I could tell. So at one point Jack got up to go to the bathroom, I reached over and sucked down half his tea, and not long after the waiter floated by going to another table, looked over, saw Jack's glass half full and tripped over his own feet to get to the back to get the tea pitcher, no joke. He fairly FLEW over to the table, almost upsetting the table in his haste. He was glowing, all because he could refill that glass. It took all I had no to bust out laughing right there, I sort of hid behind my napkin until he left, and I was shaking with laughter, with tears in my eyes when Jack got back, and I told him what happened and he cracked up. This dude really liked his job lol. The dinner was so good, but we were so full, and because at first, when we got there, the owner was replacing light bulbs or something in the room, ( remember, we were there when they unlocked the doors, and maybe 10 minutes had passed ) and he ended up dimming all the lights in the room. Our corner was almost pitch black, and the waiter came out and immediately went to waving his arms in distress, running over to the owner and whispering we were there, so the owner yells an apology and turns the lights up, he did not see us, and told the waiter to give us a free dessert.

Bonus!

However, with all the food we had consumed int he last 24 hours, we groaned at the thought of dessert and tried to pass it up, but the wonderful waiter was having NONE of that lol,. He put two pieces of cheesecake in a carryout container and carried it to the door for me lol. This dude earned every dime of his tip and then some let me tell you lol. We tipped him generously!

We ended up eating the cheesecake later, in the hotel in bed while watching TV. The cold front had moved in by this time, it was below freezing with the 30 mph wind chill, so Jack went to sleep and I stayed up half the night watching the History Channel, which I miss horribly...as we do not have cable.

The next morning we packed out and loaded up the truck, then headed for our goodbye breakfast. We had made friends with one of the waitresses, Charlotte, from last year, and we cut up with her both mornings we were there, and ran into her a few times on the hotel grounds. She was a trip. We both got the decadent French Toast the second morning, and it was a perfect end to a perfect stay there. I hugged Charlotte on the way out, and we started walking around town so I could take my pics for the tour entry.

SO we ate like kings while we were on vacation, and it was worth every penny, and every moan of " OMG I am so full" every night lol...

Here are the few pics we got of the inside of the restaurant, taken with Jacks cell so forgive the quality...

Above pic is the table beside us...ours looked exactly like that but he took a pic of the "clean " table instead lol..for my blog, bless his heart..

Above is another table across the way from us...it was nightfall by then, and the lighting was very low, and romantic, with Victorian chandeliers. The whole place was done is shades of purple mixed with rich, dark woods. Elegant and beautiful!

He had turned the shutter noise off on his phone so he could catch me unawares and take my pic, and I am swallowing my pride and publishing "raw" pics of myself, which never happens, because I always carefully set up my pics since I am not that photogenic...but for the sake of the experience, I let these two slide through...forgive my Cherokee moon face lol. The pic above I was suspecting him of taking pics of me when he said he was not..and you can see the disbelief on my face lol..you can also see the edge of that scar from my wreck I mentioned way back when.

Extreme close up above! Lol! I rather you check out the decor behind me lol..I look like I have no fingers, scary! Oh wait, there is my thumb lol..

And that sums up the food portion of our journey. All of my senses were very much satisfied in this trip!

Next up, the Apalachicola town tour!!

The Vacation Chronicles: Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs....

Sorry I have not gotten the rest of the vacation posts up, the weather here turned very cold ( in fact we are due for snow tomorrow...in Florida...) again, and I have been moping around, generally feeling sorry for myself. I have just not had the drive to do much of anything lol. But today is a different day and I feel a bit better so here we go again!

While we were on vacation, for some reason I found myself taking pictures of random signs. Like every sign at the hotel, a couple of places around town, and I took one or two when we drove to Panama City the second night for dinner. This is where I found out I dislike lobster, which is odd because I like "fake" lobster. More on that later.

Most of these signs are self explanatory, but I will throw in some info here and there as I remember it lol...

These first few are of the hotel signs....I already posted a few in the other posts so I will try not to repeat here.

The above pic is from "Honey Hole Liquors" and it was a neat little place, looking like something out of New Orleans. I will go more into depth in another post when I tour the town a bit, but the atmosphere of this place was amazing, and I got myself a t shirt while I was there! But seriously? Honey Hole Liquors? How awesome of a name is that lol..?

This was prolly my fav sign of the trip. We were driving along aimlessly, headed towards Panama City, looking for somewhere we might like to eat. We were in no rush, and just outside of Panama we were in Callaway, and I saw this sign and laughed as we drove by, then I saw that it might be a place to eat, so we turned around and went back. Turns out it was a MASSIVE sports bar, and while we did pause to use the bathrooms, we did not stay, the bar scene is not what we were looking for. The sign made me laugh however, so I snapped a pic in the parking lot. Helen Back. Hell and Back. I love word play lol.

Look out for BEARS! We saw tons of these on the way down, but I did not take a pic until we were headed home. Some of the signs had a single adult bear on it, but most of them had the mama bear and baby bear on it. I was not overly surprised, hell, last winter we had a black bear in our back yard, twice, but these signs were not there last year when we went, so apparently there has been an influx of bear to the area.

That about sums it up for this post. I posted signs in the other previous entries, and I needed a place to showcase these tidbits of the journey. Next post is a short post about all the nom worthy food we had while we were gone! Stay tuned! 

Weekend Bliss

So I took a little bit of a vacation blog break this weekend to spend a blissful weekend with my family. It was a great weekend, with all day and half the night NASCAR on Saturday, and Jack's first homemade pizza that was so freaking good, I am so proud of him, he made the dough and everything, it was spectacular, I even got to take a rare nap that afternoon,and then the Super Bowl today and what do you know...

THE SAINTS WON BABY!!!!

I was so stoked! I watched the first half and the last quarter, missed halftime and 3rd quarter due to dinner and dishes and what not, but wow, what a kick ass game!

In honor of the game I made Cajun dirty rice, black eyed peas, Cajun seasoned corn and jalapeno cornbread for dinner and it was awesome.

So tomorrow after some odd cleaning projects I will get back to the last couple of vacation entries. I refuse to upload the pics to Facebook until I finish my blogs so I need to get the lead out lol.

I hope you all had a great weekend and stay tuned for more vacation blogs tomorrow!

The Vacation Chronicles: Room With A View

I am starting to feel like one of those friends who force their guests to watch slideshows of vacation trips lol...thank you to Lyon, Stag, and Ryan for your comments on my previous entries, nice to know someone was checking them out lol...

We did not spend as much time in the hotel this year over the span of two days as we did last year in a single day and night it seems, since we were free to roam without Alex. When we were in the room, it was usually later in the evening, and the second night the storms raged, the winds blew frigid and the clouds rolled over the full moon, cloaking her in dark trappings.

I did manage to get a few blurry pics of the moon, mostly in cloud cover, and Jack managed to get one single photo of her with only the thinnest of cloud cover. I also managed to get a brooding picture of the storm rolling in over the bridge we crossed to get to the hotel.

Everything in these pics were taken from the balcony of our room.

In the pic above, those tiny docks were built just for the birds to roost. Part of the bird sanctuary was directly across the river from us.....

In the above pic, you could clearly see the storm front moving in. 

The above shot was the only "clear" shot of the moon I got. It is blurry because the flash made the pics really crappy, so all my moon shots look slightly surreal lol.

The pic above is the one from Jack's phone. I like the bluish tone it gave the pic.

I admit the views were not what most people consider magnificent, but I love storms, especially when I am not at home for it to possibly knock out my internet haha. Last year it was bright and sunny, but this year it was a rainy and stormy weekend, but that is ok...it did not slow us down and made for some awesome photo ops, like the stormy seas in my last post.

Three more posts to go!

The Vacation Chronicles: Stormy Seas

As I stated in my last post, it was rainy and overcast all weekend. That did not bother me in the least, although I have to admit the weather turned frigid on Saturday, and the wind was wild. We did manage to walk around the town again and do some shopping and take in the local atmosphere, and I scored myself two shirts, a green short sleeve with a vintage advertisement on it for an old local seafood company, and a long sleeved grey shirt from Honey Hole Liquors. Which is, by the way, the best name for a Liquor Store I have ever heard. More about this place in a later post.

Anyway, Saturday afternoon we decided to go for a drive out past town and see what was out there, going towards Panama City. We went though Port St. Joe, Mexico Beach, Tyndall Air Force Base, and a place called Callaway, which is basically the outskirts of Panama City. We ended up stopping there for one of the best sirloin steaks I have ever put in my mouth, and a homemade bleu cheese salad dressing that made me tear up it was so divine.

On the way, the ocean was to our left the whole drive, and the ocean was seething with windswept fury. I started getting antsy, and trying to take pics through Jack's window as we drove, and he was nice enough to pull over and let me run down to the water and take pics.

Folks, it was FREEZING, the wind was blowing about 30 mph, and in less than 5 minutes my hands were so frozen it was all I could do to make my fingers grasp the camera. However, I felt ELECTRIFIED! The wind, the rolling ocean, the waves, the dark skies...I was in the middle of a vortex of volatile energy and I loved it! Jack had to literally grab me by the hand and start pulling me back to the truck before I collapsed of hypothermia lol...

I took a lot of pics, and they all look rather similar since they are of the breaking waves, but I want to share, as I still feel the tingle of the energy they captured when I took them. SO while they may look plain, they are a reminder of the awesomeness I felt touch me that day, the Mother having a good venting session...Enjoy!

So there are my ocean pics. It may not look like much, but it is a huge contrast to the normally gentle and calm waters of the area. Hope you liked them!

The Vacation Chronicles: Trip and Hotel

I admit that I did not take many pics on the trip down, I do not think I got started until we were on the really long bridge that crossed the river over into Apalachicola. This first post will have those pics and the pics of the hotel we stayed at, which is the quaint and magical Apalachicola River Inn. ( Click for link and their awesome pics )

First I have to explain why this place is so special to me, and why it was such a big deal to be going back. (Other than the fact vacations of any type are pretty much unheard of in my broke life lol.)

Last January, Jack and I were going through a really rough patch, and we almost split up. As you all have been reading for the last several months, we are stronger than we have ever been, and truly happy. It took a LOT of work to get there however, and a lot of the work fell on my shoulders because it was my actions, or rather, inactions, that caused a good portion of the issues. We spent the better part of a week apart last year, and when the nightmare was over, Jack decided to take us on a little trip as we had just got income taxes back, and the original plan was just to get out of the house and away from everything and hole up in a hotel for the night, but somehow no where was good enough and we ended up 2 hours from home in the town of Apalachicola and we found a hotel right on the bay. We had Alex last year, and we got a double queen bed room, on an upstairs level, which to my delight had a private balcony overlooking the bay. It was beautiful. The hotel is old, decorated in rich wood, white and purple hues, and the magic of the water all around.

As most know, I am drawn to the ocean like a moth to a flame, and nothing recharges me like being near the ocean. Last year, we only got to stay one night, and I actually cried when we left, the evening we spent there was pivotal to our relationship, and I felt the time there was to short. As we left, we vowed to return this year, and hopefully every year after that when we got our taxes in. All year long I have been in a high state of anticipation over it, and while it looked like we might have had to take Alex with us, everything fell into place at the last minute and Jack and I got to return to the hotel for a truly adult vacation.

The hotel offers a complimentary cocktail and a continental breakfast for each nights stay. I did not take any pics of the inside of the restaurant on site because there was a lot of people in there and I felt awkward about snapping pics of people eating...but Jack did get some with his cell phone, so when those are in I will post those.

So, here we go with the pics, and I will point out what everything is. Some of the pics, especially the night ones, I had to take with no flash because it drowned out the fairy lights, so those are blurry, but you will get the idea lol...also, you should be able to click the pics to get a larger view...

The first few will be of the river as we crossed and as we headed into town, and then pics of the hotel itself!

These first couple are of the river on the right and the long bridge we drove across...

 These next few are of the hotel itself, the room, and the hotel grounds..some during the day, some at night. It was overcast and rainy all weekend, raining at night mostly, and I got some awesome pics of the storm over the bridge we crossed over from the hotel room....

Above is the signs you see as you pull into the hotel.

Above is the center of the front of the hotel, our room was the one on the right of the sign.

Above is the courtyard entrance to the main office and oyster bar.

Above is hotel walkway ( at night ) leading to room

Above is our room door lol..the cottage we wanted was rented so we got a regular room.

Above is the king bed with down pillows, great pillows to prop on, crappy to sleep on lol.

Above is Jack's side of the bed, with wicker couch.

Above is my side of the bed, with wicker chair. I loved those lamps.

Above is wicker table and two chairs, one folded up behind one of the French doors to the balcony.

Above is the best part, the balcony overlooking the bay. We spent hours out there.

Above is the bathroom mirror, but I wanted to show the wall color, it was gorgeous!

Above is the towel closet, and it had a pedestal sink!

Above is the entrance to Caroline's Restaurant from the parking lot. The food was excellent!

Above is my wonderful Jack, looking at the water from the balcony.

Above is close up of water and Jack on the balcony.

Above is entrance to Caroline's with Jack in the middle.

Above is farther up the walkway to Caroline's.

Above is the Grouper Therapy sign, Caroline's is famous for their grouper and I can vouch for that lol.

Above is the front of the hotel lit up at night. It was so windy and cold that night, it was Saturday night. That is not the moon by the way, it was cloudy and overcast...orb maybe? Wait till you see the spirit pics in a later post *winks*. The town is several hundred years old.

Above is the gazebo in front of the hotel at night. Blurry, no flash, sorry lol. I think it adds to it though!

Above is the courtyard lit up at night, again, no flash used.

Above is a swing on a tree overlooking the water. I used the flash so you can not really see, but the whole tree was covered in fairy lights.

I think I will close this post out now. I have more pics of the signs of the place lit by fairy lights, but those will be in a special post later!

I know there are a LOT of pics, and this is only a fraction of them lol. I hope you enjoyed the first glimpse of my wonderful vacation and will stay tuned for the others to come!