I seem to be getting rather late starts to the day on this vacation. It could be that I'm dreadfully tired all the time and need to catch up on my sleep. Today was no different. A late start again. Oh well.
The weather was gorgeous and I decided to go to the beach. The thing is, I hate tanning. I know, I shouldn't go to the beach then. But I love to be near water and hear the waves and be warm. Maybe I was a fish in a previous life. Unfortunately, the water was too cold for me to swim. But I slathered SPF 60 sunscreen on and sprawled on the beach towel and warmed my bones. It was also a great time to read the book I started on the plane. My friend has impeccable taste in books and since we seem to like the same things, we recommend each other great stuff. This new book (a first in a series) is so good I can't put it down. Maybe that's why I have such late starts and leisurely lunches.
But while at the beach I also went shelling. The beach is made of shells, not really sand. The shells that are ground to a powder are the "sand". Since the beach, Bowman's Beach, is in a nature preserve, you could see all sorts of birds I don't normally see. Today I saw some egrets. Had to look it up. After the tanning and a few unsuccessful attempts at pictures, I decided it was time for lunch.
I decided to go to a restaurant called the
Blue Giraffe. I saw lots of adds for it and claims of awards. I must have ordered something that was never entered into any contests since the burger I had was very dry (I ordered it medium) and the key lime pie was just gross. It was very chewy, not a word I'd want to describe a pie. And it just didn't taste right. The location though was rather pleasant. The mall reminded me of the shops in Door County with the charm of an old European city center only less dirty/lazy and well maintained. The fountains were soothing and the old trees that would take 5 people to link hands around the trunk must have give in it the old-world charm.
After a bit more of driving around and stopping at some random nature trail to see the descending sun, I decided to drive to Captiva Island to see the sun set. Absolutely, jaw-droppingly, stunningly spectacular. People (me included) would pull off to the side of the road and watch the sunset. Others were better prepaired and were there on the beach with friends; beer and camera in hand, ready to witness the birth of night. Shockingly beautiful.
As tired as I was after driving so much in an unfamiliar place, I still decided to go out to Naples for dinner. You see, I've seen a few adds for a
Persian restaurant and I love middle-eastern food so I decided to check it out. The restaurant had a really nice write-up in one of the magazines and it was recent (this year) so my appetite was getting a workout just looking at the pictures. This was the worst meal I've had in Florida. For an appetizer I ordered a Shirazi Salad on the recommendation of my strangely-accented server. It was OK. Then for the main course, I at first ordered the mixed grill, thinking that I could eat the leftovers for lunch the next day (I had a fridge and microwave in my room). But it was so bad that I sent it back after just a few bites. The chicken was really dry, the beef was absolutely tasteless, and the lamb was barely edible. So I gave another dish a try. This time, it was a braised lamb with plums. I don't know how it's possible to have dry lamb in a stew, but this lamb was dry. The plums were tasty though. Quite disappointing.
I spent a day at Ding Darling Wildlife Refuge. Actually, I spent about two days there. On one of the days I took a trolley tour through the refuge and the tour guide was a very nice elderly woman who told us about the habitat and wild life. We saw tree crabs, flying fish (no really, the fish would jump a few feet out of the water and then back in), and all kinds of birds. I really liked the tour but there wasn't enough time for all the pictures I wanted to take, so I came back the next day and spent about 3 hours or so on the grounds.
On one of the evenings, I took a sunset cruise in the refuge. This picture is from that trip. If you're going to take a cruise, I'd highly recommend the sunset one because you see more birds and you see them in a way you wouldn't if it weren't sunset.
There were mangrove islands, sandbars where birds would gather, treetops where the birds would perch.
Beaches. Did I mention how amazing the beaches are? Did I also mention that they're all made of shell? So you get to see all these beauties everywhere! And I got a decent collection of those. :)
