Honeymoon Day Six (Saturday, September 23, 2000)

[I kept a bit of a diary of our honeymoon 10 years ago. I think I will share it, sort of “as it happened”. There are 11 installments. Enjoy.]
We have a gift certificate for “2 breakfasts” at First Watch, thanks to Sally’s parents, so we walk down there and eat like chazerim (that’s Hebrew for “pigs”). Sally has the “Trifecta”, a big waffle, bacon, and 2 eggs, plus a side of potatoes. I have the “Traditional”, two eggs, potatoes, bacon, and an English muffin, plus an order of French toast. The food here is very good, but frankly it’s not up to Sunrise Café standards back home. The French toast isn’t nearly as good (I can’t decide what they’ve left out of the recipe) and I just prefer Sunrise’s hash browns to the cubed fried potatoes First Watch has. However this should not be taken as a damnation of First Watch; the food is good, the service is great, the ambience is pleasant. Sally says that I should not compare First Watch to Sunrise, but rather, to Le Peep, which has a more similar type of fare. I don’t care much for Le Peep myself which may be why Sally likes First Watch better than I do 🙂 On a different note, our waitress is only on her second day here, and we agree that she is first-rate; we leave her a big tip.
After a bit of a rest back at the condo, we hop in the Blazer and drive north. We go to Bank One (the only Bank One in Naples) at Vanderbilt Beach Road and Tamiami Trail to get some cash, then head over to Sam’s Club to buy Sally’s dad a printer to keep at the condo. Then we engage in a rather fruitless search for a place called the Ice Cream Café that supposedly exists “in the Cross Roads Shopping Center at the Vineyards”, which my perusal of the map seems to indicate is in the same general NE area of Naples. We can’t find it. Fine, we don’t need ice cream. We go instead to see the Ritz Carlton Hotel at Vanderbilt Beach. Very cool. I tell Sally that someday when we’re rich we’ll stay here for a night just so we can say we did.
Then we go for our second walk on Vanderbilt Beach (Sally has pictures to prove that I got my feet wet and picked up some shells). Then and ONLY then do we resume our search for ice cream, finding a Haagen-Daas shop in the Waterside Shops at Pine Ridge Road and Tamiami Trail. After a short stroll in the mall it’s time to go home and take a nap–it’s HOT and HUMID and I’M TIRED. We plan to go to Mustang Sally’s tonight for dinner.
Mustang Sally’s is just as much fun (if not more) at night than in the afternoon. Sally has the rib-eye steak and I have the filet mignon (with special lemon-pepper sauce for which recipe I would cheerfully kill). After this awesome dinner we chat off and on with Mary, Dave, and other assorted wait staff until 8:30 and the start of the evening’s entertainment: Myles Loud. This is professional karaoke at its best. Myles looks like Elvis and can belt out anything from Elvis to Tom Jones to Louis Armstrong singing “It’s A Wonderful World”. Naturally his repertoire includes “Mustang Sally”, one of four songs I am forced to get up and dance to. He has some help along the way from a lady who must be one of the karaoke night regulars (Miss Katie) and from the manager and the DJ who follows his act at 11 PM. There is no question that our evening at Sally’s is the best clean American fun Sally and I have had in years. We’re already planning to go back next week to hear Myles again.
It’s 20 miles back from Marco to the condo but we don’t care. What fun.