Travelogue: Southwest Florida

Greetings from Fort Myers, Florida. The Scout is working. Mission: Make this piece of heaven look like the piece where you want to go and spend your hard-earned cash. We are staying at the Sanibel Harbour Resort and Spa, recently changed demoted from the Preferred Hotels and Restaurants brand to being a Marriott. And by recently, I mean last Friday.

So when we splurged on room service last night, my salad that was supposed to have argula, avocado, tortilla strips and jalopeno Havarti had none of those ingredients. It did have mango, which was quite nice. Sensing an opportunity to use the recent Marriott takeover to my advantage, I called and asked that they take the salad off the bill. This mortifies the Scout, who grew up in the 50’s and thinks that I should just be thankful I got something to eat at all. I explained that I wasn’t complaining as much as simply providing feedback. Blake, the guy on the other end of the phone, agreed with me. Blake would rather hear me explain in a non-judgmental way how the salad didn’t resemble the written description in the room service menu, than hear it at high volume from an agitated person at some point in the future. I see it as a win-win. I got a free salad, and they got quality-control for $17.

I guess it’s thanks to Marriott that we’re paying only $99 a night (well, the production company is) for a room with a sunset view overlooking San Carlos Bay. This hotel isn’t on Sanibel Island proper—it’s on the last bit of land (Punta Rassa) before you get to the causeway (toll: $6 for cars) that leads to Sanibel Island.

I’m not used to the word Sanibel yet. It makes me think “Sani-flush” and then I get the jingle in my head. “Take this job and flush it, Sani-flush it chlorine clean.” Or is it “take this grime”? My guess is that I’m not remembering the jingle correctly (especially since I haven’t been able to find it on YouTube yet). It’s a riff on Take this Job and Shove It. Anyone, anyone?

In any case, along with the military, advertising’s been very, very good to me in terms of being able to see the world. Hello, Southwest Florida!

I like being in the eastern time zone. I get a little kick out of watching The Today Show live (very little when I am reminded how they do the same 8 stories over and over). The fashion segment, the diet segment, the cooking segment, the parenting segment, the celebrity hawking segment. Look, there’s Bill Cosby! He’s promoting Bill Cosby Presents the Cosnarati: State of Emergency. Seems the comic/educator is trying to get his message out via hip hop. You may be a tad preachy, Mr. Cosby, but I appreciate your positivity.

It’s cloudy here in Florida this morning. The Scout is still asleep—though he did roll over and ask “What’s this obsession with Sani-flush?” because he heard me listening to this (in which animation is referred to as “time lapse”) and this (Dirty toilet! Dirty toilet!).

Photo credit: Trip Advisor user Greeneview.

More to follow. We’ll be here all week.