Chick balls (part two).

So where did I leave you last? Ahh yes, the wonders of relaxing on the beach.

I wasn't too crazy about walking along the beach barefoot. The sand was rough - it looked like it had a lot of shells, salt crystals and junk in it. Not junk as in trash, but junk as in unidentifed "stuff." I prefer fine grain sand :)

I think we chose a good time to go - The beaches were not crowded at all. Lots of room, not too noisy, pretty low traces of human existence (i.e., trash). I've been to the shore around Michigan where there's a beer bottle or a plastic bag every few feet.

So anyway, back to the recap. There's not much to say about the beach experience. All I know was that I loved it. And when we left on Monday, it made me wish for an extra day to just chill on the beach.

The beach was private - And you could rent 2 lounge chairs (I believe the correct word is "chaise longues" for $15.00 a day with an umbrella or some other sun shielding device that I can't remember the name of. Or you could fry yourself with just a chair for $5.00 a day. We didn't do either because we had our stolen towels.

If I had that extra day though, I would have gotten the $15.00 special. Maybe next time.

So after lounging around on the beach, the stomach was rumbling - It was time to eat. So we decided to pop back to the room, get washed up, and go forage for food. Plus we had to look for cheesy souvenirs. Gene had to buy some stuff for coworkers, and I was just looking to get something to remember my trip.

Not one to waste a day pass (heh), we rode the Water Taxi again to the Beach Place. We strolled around and checked out some more menus and ended up at this burger joint called Cheeburger Cheeburger. Apparently it's a chain, but I'd never heard of it before. And while we were walking around, I was telling Geneman that I was in the mood for fried food that was bad for me. Like clam strips or something.

Well, what we ended up getting was fried, and really bad for me. But no clam strips. We got burgers (I got the "Classic" and then split this mega sized bowl of fries and onion rings (which they called the "Frings" basket. Why I'm telling you this detail, I don't really know.

Oh wait, I remember. My hamburger was 5.5 ounces pre-cooked weight. Just for shits and giggles, I challenged Geneman to eat the "Famous Pounder" which has 20 oz. of pre cooked meatiness. He didn't take the challenge, but he thinks he can do it. I think he got the 10 oz. hamburger (pre cooked weight) instead.

Overall the food was pretty tasty. The onion rings and fries were awesome. I would go again. Glad the chain isn't around here.

After dinner we decided to look for cheesy souvenirs. I think we checked out pretty much every gift shop on the block. Looking at overpriced clothes, lots of cheesy schwag, and random items. I bought some refrigerator magnets (our hotel was pictured in it!) and 2 t-shirts. That was about it for me. Not a big spender.

After getting our goods, we walked around the strip some more. There was a bar that featured a dude playing live guitar - he had mad skills. And he had a flowy dancer with Shakira style booty shake. So we hung around across the street (by the beach) to have a listen. The evening was a little on the cooler side, but I could have just sat there for hours just listening to music and people watching.

But we ended up walking around again. Where did we go? You guessed it. Beach Place. Saturday night we had seen this piano bar - Howl at the Moon - It looked pretty packed, but we just weren't in the mood for partying because of all the travel. So we thought we'd give it a try that evening. There were open windows into the bar so you could get a preview of what was going on inside. It's a dueling piano singalong type of gig. So there's 2 pianos on stage, and they just sing songs and entertain the crowd. The people on stage looked like so much fun, so we thought we'd go in and check things out.

We were there for almost 5 hours.

We closed the bar at 1:30 a.m. We sang and heard everything from Billy Joel to Bette Midler. And one of the performers was really really cute. A real hottie. So that was a bonus. Geneman and I were both quite smitten with her. She was lovely - and it seemed like she had a perfect personality too. She was really funny and spunky. She was the one who introduced me to the phrase "chick balls" during one of her performances. I won't get into that though, cause this is a family show.

The show was totally cool - Very laid back, very liberal on the content. I had a great time. I don't think I've ever had the nerve to actually sing in public. I mean, it was it a big group, of course, but normally the only time I sing is in the car with the windows rolled up. Even then I'm glad my windows are now tinted :)

After we closed up the bar, we ended up taking some extra pictures on the walk home. We were walking on the beach and taking pictures of our surroundings. Again, I don't know if any of them came out - It was dark and I wasn't using a tripod. So everything may be blurvision.

When we got back to the hotel, I showered, and was pretty much out.

(just like now)