We woke up around 11am on Sunday, the "big day" which we were considering the real anniversary celebration, albeit a day late. We had looked through the restaurant directory the night before and all I could get think of was "16 varieties of pancakes". I didn't even remember the name of the place. So I flipped through again, and found Dino's. Oddly enough, despite all those choices, I ended up with buttermilk pancakes I could have gotten anywhere. Mine came with sausage; Jen also got sausage but with a Belgian waffle, which had the place's logo cooked into it - you'd have to see the picture to believe it. We each got grits and we got a plate of biscuits and gravy to share. The pancakes were OK, the sausage and grits average, but the biscuits were a little below average, and the gravy must have been canned. After a couple bites neither of us touched it. Everything else we finished.
Dino's House of Pancakes, and their branded waffle. Click these and other images to see them fullsize.
MID-DAY
Dino's was pretty far from our hotel, but we knew the Planet Hollywood was farther yet, so we pressed on, to see what there was to see. We were surprised to come upon the Colonial Mall of Myrtle Beach, as we have a Colonial Mall in Greenville (NC). We had to check it out - and found it was much, much better. We looked at a couple novelty shops, didn't really find anything there. I found a shoe place, and found myself a nice pair of sandals. The problem with me buying shoes is that the right side of my body is slightly larger than my left side, so my right side needs a half to whole size larger shoe. Since I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to mix and match, I do it on the sly. So my left sandal is size 10 and my right one is size 11, but to look at my feet they both look like a good fit. (They had no half sizes.)
The Colonial Mall in Myrtle Beach.
From there, we headed back to the hotel. The idea was to change into shorts and go play miniature golf, but the rain had let up (it rained most of the trip) so plans changed, I was going to hit the weight room and Jen was going to go swimming. But I didn't want to split us up, so we compromised and settled for the hot tub. It was rather large and I did a bit of playing around in it. After about half an hour (the sign said a max time of 15 minutes) we moved on to the pool, where we were alone at first. Swimming was OK until we got some company. A middle aged couple and what at first appeared to be a good-looking girl, until we got a look at her face. Jen later estimated her age at 16-18, but I was thinking more like 14-16. I love swimming alone or with people I know. I don't like swimming with strangers. It was OK for a bit, but then we headed back to our room.
Me in nothing but shorts and a smile but covered in bubbles.
DINNER
At this point we decided we didn't have time for golf, so we cleaned ourselves up and headed out for dinner. Our destination was the Planet Hollywood in Myrtle Beach, a good ways away. We ate at the Hard Rock Cafe in Gatlinburg, TN, and Hard Rock and Planet Hollywood are supposed to be the coolest places to eat, and I wanted to try both. I made the mistake of thinking a destination like Planet Hollywood would be marked, that there would be signs, that there would be ads in the stuff we had at the hotel. None of that. It was pretty hard to find. We went farther than we should have, had to double back, but we found it eventually.
The outside of Planet Hollywood Myrtle Beach. You go up the covered stairs - then back down more stairs inside. They have a menu so you can decide before you go in. And that's me you can barely see.
The place looked nice from the inside and outside, I'll give them that. On the outside were hand prints from various celebrities - we saw Demi Moore, Charlton Heston, Paul Newman, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, and Johnny Depp. Their hand prints, anyway. Inside, we were seated right away, but in a side room. My first thought was that it was the nonsmoking area, but I happened to notice that only families were in our area - the main area was reserved, it seemed, for hip, good-looking college kids. (Maybe they were doing photographs, I don't know.) No children or middle-aged folks in sight out there. The waitress did her job, but we kind of felt like the treatment was generic and they were hurrying to close. We got our drinks, but we weren't offered refills. The food was mediocre at best, and we weren't offered dessert. Maybe Planet Hollywood is good elsewhere, but not in Myrtle Beach. Still, I'm glad I experienced it. Someone's getting a shirt from there, but I can't say who because it's a surprise.
The left is me pointing at Rocky's (Sylvester Stallone's) prints; the right, John McClane's (Bruce Willis').
Jen looking up at the Terminator, from back when Arnold was the man.
When we left, Jen acted like she was mad at me, wouldn't talk to me - I thought I'd done something wrong, but I couldn't think of what. Turns out she was just really disappointed with dinner, and to 'thank' them for their 'great' service I spent $25 in their gift shop. Well, I didn't buy anything for us, but I can see where she was coming from. She doesn't hold grudges, and was fine by the time we got to the next place, which I won't post about, but it was a waste of time regardless. Then we stopped at a gift shop and blew about $50 in gifts. I got a laser pointer (always wanted one since my youngest brother got the first one I bought confiscated) but I think the rest was gifts. Oh yeah, we got ourselves Myrtle Beach license plates - the little ones - to go with the Tennessee ones we'd gotten a year before.
After we got back to the hotel, sleep followed shortly. The next day, I would get sick both places we ate in Myrtle Beach, get rained on, and ultimately have a real bad day.
TO BE CONTINUED...
No comments:
Post a Comment