Tonight's picture was taken on Easter of 2007. Mattie was five years old. We took him to the US Arboretum to see the azaleas. My joke with Mattie was that these glorious flowers came out in honor of his birthday. Mattie loved that notion.
Quote of the day: I think we need to do some deep soul searching about what's important in our lives and renew our spirit and our spiritual thinking, whether it's through faith-based religion or just through loving nature or helping your fellow man. ~ Louie Schwartzberg
The West coast of Florida, I have found is much more limited in dining selections than the East coast of Florida. Nonetheless, there are many to choose from in Naples unlike other towns on the West coast. Last night we had a hellish dining experience. We went to a restaurant called FISH. This is a photo of the view from FISH. Looks lovely doesn't it? That is where the lovely ended. We made a 6:30pm reservation. We got there and we could see the restaurant wasn't busy. However, we were told that we had to wait 15 minutes to be seated. So we did. After 20 minutes Peter went up to see what the hold up was because literally the restaurant had SEVERAL open tables. Needless to say, we waited 30 minutes until we were shown to our table. I wish that was the only issue. After waiting 10 minutes, I then got up from the table to find the manager because no one stopped by our table to take even a drink order. I suspect the hostess sat us at a table that did not have an assigned server.
When I went to track down the hostess, I told her I wanted to talk to the manager. I instead got the owner who had to be the rudest person I have ever had the displeasure of meeting in the service industry. Before I opened my mouth, he verbally attacked me. He basically said I did not understand his plight. He had three people who did not report to work and was overwhelmed.
There is a nice way to say this, but it did not come out nicely. Instead, he kept telling me I wasn't listening to him. Of course he wasn't listening to me at all. In fact, he could care less what my issue was.... he never asked what he could do for us, never offered to comp an appetizer or to even find us a wait staff person to serve us right away. He followed me back to my table, and began to also argue with Peter. Once he walked away, Peter and I got up and left the restaurant without eating. We weren't going to spend a penny there after being treated so poorly. Ironically, later in the evening I was going to write a review of the restaurant on Open Table (where I made our reservation). However, the restaurant canceled our reservation preventing us from writing a review. I did not go to bed last night until writing a scathing review on Trip Advisor, Yelp, and also contacting Open Table directly. The owner of this restaurant should consider another job because he clearly hates what he does and it shows!!!
Once we walked .5 miles and got to the beach, there was a LONG line to get into the beach. Why the line? Well the line processes requests like chairs, towels, umbrellas and also equipment rentals like kayaks. The problem with this line is that hotel guests and the public have to wait on the same line. If that were the only problem that would be great! The person working behind the counter is very young and NOT professional, yet he is managing all the staff working the beach. I should tell you that this service is contracted out, these are not hotel employees. Which makes sense since this is a public beach. The fellow processed our kayak request and charged our room for the rental. He then told us to wait by the beach and his staff member would help us into the kayak. We went out to the beach, but it was broiling hot and totally chaotic. So I went back and spoke to this fellow, and asked him if we could just take the kayak now on our own. He refused, as he said his staff members had to assist us. I asked him when that would be and he snapped. Again, I got a litany about 8 people not showing up for work and they were overwhelmed. This time I told him that I understood his problem, but his problem shouldn't be my problem. Since it was quite clear his two staff people were busy moving beach chairs, umbrellas and getting food, I demanded our money back. I could see us waiting an hour in the sun for the elusive staff member to help us. So another poor service experience! Which seems to be a trend in Naples. Every manager we have met is complaining about poor and unprofessional staff. That may be so, but I blame management for hiring such inappropriate people and not training them.
Certainly today's water experience was lovely, but it doesn't compare to our last two trips down in the Everglades. The Everglades is simply fascinating, peaceful and filled with wild life.
All I know is if Mattie were with us, he would have said to me.... look a mama and her babies.... like you and me!
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