I don't pretend to be who/what I'm not. I will be honest here unless I publish under the category "This could be news," which is 99% fiction and a wee bit sarcastic. ;-) I want readers who come here to have as much fun as I do. Not all subjects can be fun, but most can be funny if I do my job right ;-)
My inner child is reflected in my logo and will change at a moment's notice.
December 31st, 2021. There were several good restaurant options along the main strip. We made mental notes when we passed them on the way to and from shopping.
After beaching and cleaning up we looked up restaurants in the local phone book. Doubting we could get a reservation at any of the ones we wanted to try, we called and found out that Blackbeard’s Seafood Restaurant did not take reservations, so we headed out down the strip. We were happy to get seated right away, both of us dreading a long wait. The service was really great and the food was fabulous. I had the Caesar Salad with charbroiled shrimp and an order of french fries. I could only eat half, so I finished it for lunch the next day.
We waited for midnite watching movies in our pajamas and tucked into bed. Not a glamorous way to greet the new year, but cozy and warm. And together. We were not expecting to see the fireworks planned for further down the island, closer to the bridge to the mainland. It must have been the force of the wind, but we had a front-row seat on our balcony. Maggie got some photos and shared them.
Some of them (like the one in the middle), hung and exploded out more stars. There must have been two dozen of them, if not more.
They were set off an hour before midnite. At midnite the balconies were full of hotel guests yelling “Happy New Year!” and other assorted greetings.
We began 2022 by snoring and we are not ashamed about it, either.
My traveler’s curse reared its ugly head the second we entered our 3rd-floor corner room.
Up until that moment, the hotel was a normal Hilton. The neat and pretty entranceway, the lobby was over-decorated with holiday lights and blinking snowmen, but it was definitely a Hilton Hotel. I purposely chose Hilton because I wanted a high-end, luxurious place to hang out in when we were not on the beach. Sigh.
The room was so sparse and empty that it appeared it had been robbed before we got there. When you entered, you were in the “living room” area. A sofa, desk and a large old chair. Nothing matched the other. No carpets, area rugs, pillows. No overhead light. When you flipped the switch by the door, a dim round light came on in the tiny hallway that connected the living room, bathroom, and bedroom.
The light switch in the bedroom turned off the dome light. There was no overhead light fixture here either. So forget trying to find your p.j.’s in your luggage. It was dark. Oh, wait! There were two lamps by the beds. They did not shed light on the room though. They were lights to read in bed with. LED penlights on swivels, mounted into the wall between the two beds. BTW, the light you can see in the photo is sunshine.
The bathroom had good lighting, but it was noisy. They had the fan attached to the switch, so it was all or nothing. They must have purchased the T.P. and tissues from China. Thin, one-ply, recycled sandpaper. There was no toilet roll holder, so the TP sat in a cubby hole under the counter. It was sad. At least this room had a small trash can. None in the living or bedrooms, not even one by the desk.
Our “kitchen” was a long table that was nailed to the wall, like a shelf. We had a small microwave and a little one-cup Keurig coffee maker. Coffee pods, sugar & creamer were next to it. No coffee cups, however. I called the front desk and requested coffee cups. An hour later, a worker showed up with a plastic bag full of K-cups and packets of sugar & creamer. No cups to make and drink the coffee. I sighed and called the desk again, explaining that we were good with supplies but we needed the cups to drink the coffee out of. An hour passed and I called to check on our request. They asked me to check the outside of the door because that is where they probably hung the bag. No bag. They will be right up, she assured me. I found the cups hanging outside the door before I went to bed. It was a darned shame that the coffee pot did not work right. That was not much of a surprise, considering.
Below the microwave was a baby refrigerator that had NO temp controls inside of it. I looked inside it and all around the outside. No control dial or button of any kind. I asked Maggie to look for one, in case I missed it. Nope, it does not. I put my insulin on the lowest shelf in the door and hoped it would not freeze. It did not. The back of the unit was what froze things. You learned things as you go at this Hilton.
The next day, I wanted to get a different room, but Maggie did not think it would make any difference. She peeked into other rooms when housekeeping was in there and they were just like ours. I decided to give it another day. Besides, the sun was out, the air was warm and sultry, and the beach was calling us. We spent as much time in the sun as we could stand.
The winds were so strong! They did have red flag warnings out because of the wind. It was a warm wind, so that was not the problem. My beach hat was equipped with a strap to keep it from blowing off my head. But the wind had its fun with the hat anyway and the thing beat my head and face the whole time. I was not having fun, so I left Maggie happily in her beach chair, reading her book and I went back to our not-so-Hilton room. We did have a balcony that sheltered us from most of the wind and when it was sunny out we could be out and not in the room.
View from Room 301
The balcony had a fabulous view. I wrote in my journal and enjoyed the sun without wind. I caught myself dozing off, but I did not want to take a nap in our room because it was cold in there. The heater/AC controls did not change anything. The fan blew cold air 24/7 – even when the unit was turned off.
Karma must have been getting back at us for having our window open in the winter at college and freezing out the whole 3rd floor. If you or someone you know roomed in the North Tower, 3rd floor 77-78 at SEMO, please accept my apologies.
Funny how things will come back to you. After not being in an airport, by myself, for years, once I got there I felt confident in how to find where I was to wait. This would not seem like a big deal to most people, but for me, it was a rare thing to be confident, alone, in a strange place.
My morning started at 4:15 am with a wake-up call and hustling to get dressed and re-packed to catch a 5:15 shuttle to the airport. Hotel room coffee is mediocre, even at a Hilton. My adrenaline was pumping enough to make up for it. When I looked in the fridge for a bottle of soda, on my way out the door, I gasped. My insulin was also in there and I had completely forgotten it. What a horrible feeling! Complete confidence buster for sure. I thanked God for my guardian angel who, once again, saved my butt.
I made the shuttle with 2 minutes to spare.
My flight to Dallas was crammed full and I boarded with the “C” Group, so I was surprised to see an aisle seat open, not too far back. A young mom, with a 2-year-old, had the middle and window seats and motioned me to sit there. I did. She laughed and told me that no one wanted to sit there because of her child. I said that I was a grandmother and children did not scare me. Aside from some turbulence when we climbed and descended through the clouds, the flight was uneventful. Exactly how I like them.
After landing in Dallas, my first priority was a restroom, then to find what gate my flight to Harlingen was departing from. No flights to Harlingen were on the boards yet, so I hung around gate 8 and checked the texts that I missed while in Airplane Mode. A couple from Maggie, a few hours ago that she had just landed in Dallas for a long layover.
Dallas? No way! How did I not know that her flight stopped in Dallas?
Her next text said, “Wait! I think we will be boarding in Dallas together! Text me when you get here.”
Me: “I am here in Dallas, at gate 8.”
Maggie, “I’m at gate 10, can you see me?”
Me: “Whoops! I’m at the wrong gate. The notice on the board says we leave from gate 19.”
Maggie: “Are you at the airport? “I’m at gate 19.”
Me: “Me too!”
I stood up and looked around the gate. I recognized her right away, she was facing away from me. I snuck up on her and stood right behind her. “Hey, Roomie!”
How could we have gone for months without realizing we would meet in Dallas and fly to Harlingen together? I was sure that after I booked our flights that I compared them. Apparently not. The one-hour and 15-minute flight (pardon the pun), flew by. We landed at 5 pm, got the car and our bags, and we were on the road to South Padre Island by 5:30.
The sun had not gone down yet but was rapidly sinking into the west and would be dark soon. When we saw a Sonic drive-in, we decided to have dinner there for old times sake and we were starving. We were going to get to the island in the dark either way.
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