Honeymoon Day Three (Wednesday, September 20, 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.]
After our morning setting up exercises (Sally goes shelling, I nap till 10:30–napping is serious work for me) we go back to Mel’s for breakfast. Today we are presented with a plate of salad and two forks, and are informed that this is our “lettuce alone” salad . . . so I say, “And I see you presented it without dressing, which is appropriate since you shouldn’t have to get dressed on your honeymoon … ”
Then we drive up north to the Teddy Bear Museum¹ on Pine Ridge Road. Sally takes one look at the admission price (six bucks per) and decides she doesn’t need to see teddy bears that urgently. I tell her that it doesn’t matter, I could care less what it costs, do you want to see the bears or not? So we walk in and Sally asks if they have discount rates for honeymooners. Nope. (Big surprise.) So we shell out twelve dollars and almost immediately Sally decides it was worth it. Lots and lots and lots of teddy bears. Tres cool and we get a lot of pictures (for the first time since I bought my Olympus D-460 I shoot up an entire roll of digital film). Sally is happy (and so am I). It’s worth a look even at the somewhat steep price. For families with kids there is a $2.00 children’s rate, and there is also a $4.00 senior’s rate. Don’t be fooled by the apparent size of the building from outside. I think this building is actually larger inside than it is outside, and they must have ten thousand bears of all shapes and sizes scattered around, along with paintings, posters, books, and so forth. They do not however have a Bruce Springsteen bear (Sally does) and their Misha bear from the 1980 Olympics doesn’t have his ear tag any longer (Sally’s does, and thus it’s more valuable than the one in the museum). There is a huge bear wedding diorama that I spend quite some time photographing.
There is also a small gift shop but it is somewhat uninspiring (possibly because they have the door open and the air conditioning straining mightily against the 90 degree, 90 percent humidity weather outdoors).
A quick stop at the Sports Authority next door to get me a cheap pair of water shoes and we away to home for a short siesta.
Later we drive over to Tin City, which is a touristy souvenir type of mall (although they sell lots of women’s clothing in various shops, it’s a tourist trap–albeit a cute tourist trap). It being “off-season” we get a parking space right up front in the covered parking area (this amazes Sally). We find her a nice dolphin-print caftan but can’t find me an XXL Hawaiian shirt (and go figure why they sell Hawaiian shirts in Florida–some of them actually MADE in Hawaii, according to the tags).
While we’re at Tin City it starts to rain. We don’t consider this a big deal (yesterday it rained like crazy for about five minutes and stopped, about normal for South Florida) and keep shopping. When it appears that it’s going to KEEP raining for a while, we drop into the bar for a white zinfandel and a Bass ale and watch the rain come down. At the same time the Weather Channel is talking about severe weather back home, and we figure that Snoopy is probably hiding from the thunder. The rain just keeps coming down and gets even worse as the wind starts whipping it around. The staff discover a leak in the ceiling, not particularly surprising as Tin City is three old dockside warehouses tied together with covered walkways–sort of a South Florida attempt at Indianapolis’s City Market, but with more seaside charm. I like Tin City and with the foreknowledge that it’s a tourist trap, it’s fun to walk through, particularly since it’s air conditioned.
When we emerge from Tin City it’s still raining a bit, and the parking lot is flooded. We wade through about four inches of water to our boat, er, Blazer, and proceed to drive through flooded streets–up to the axles in many places. I kick in the automatic four-wheel drive just for luck and we drive several blocks north on a very wet side canal, er, street, until we reach a place where we can cut over to Route 41–which is only flooded in the right turn lanes since it’s a nicely-crowned federal highway. We will find out the next morning that at least an inch of rain fell in only 20 minutes or so, and probably more like 2 inches where we were. There is some conjecture that this is possibly due to Tropical Depression 12, west of us in the Gulf and not particularly threatening to South Florida at the moment; I think it’s just left-over disturbed atmosphere from Gordon. We’ll keep a weather eye on the weather.
After floating home (Gulf Shore Drive is also flooded) we head out for Pippin’s² for dinner. We both have the filet mignon, medium, with baked potato and salad bar. Although there is nothing special for newlyweds (we ask), our waiter offers us dessert on the house–after we finish HUGE filets and baked potatoes and big salads. We can hardly turn this down so we take him up on his offer of death by chocolate, but ask him for a SMALL piece (we both independently decide that it would be tacky to ask for a doggie bag). The piece he brings is three inches on a side and at least an inch and a half high–and he says this is a half piece … we roll home contentedly and somewhat rotundly.
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¹ Sadly, gone.
² Not as sadly, gone. Pippins was one of those places that had great food but indifferent service. And by the time it closed, the food wasn’t even that good anymore.