Jackieinpdx's Blog

I will be leaving Sanibel Island and the Sunshine Island Inn Sunday. I wanted to reflect on a few things that I have enjoyed about this vacation.

Not necessarily in this order:

1. Solitude – do what I want, when I want. No one else to confer with to decide what to do or where to go.

2. The sun – although I have read that the Portland area has had several sunny days it is not yet truly summer.

3. The beach – even with the stingrays the other day. I love to sit on the beach and listen to the waves and watch people.

4. The pool – most days when I spent time at the pool I had it pretty much to myself.

5. Reading – I am on my 5th book since I got on the plane last Saturday night.

6. Not being at work – OK, I did check my work email everyday but didn’t necessarily respond to all of it. The only emails that I replied to were the ones that I could with only one or two sentences.

7. The Sunshine Island Inn – I would stay here again. It is very comfortable and Jean, the manager is a wonderful person. She only works Monday, Wednesday and Friday but was always accommodating to anything I needed. Which to tell the truth wasn’t much. If I come back to Sanibel I have found another small inn in Old Town that I would consider staying at as well.

Now to what I didn’t like about this vacation:

1. The red eye flight to get here last Saturday night. After the last redeye to get to Isla in April I said that I would never take a night flight again. The redeye was about the only way I could get to Ft. Myers without either multiple layovers or spending a night somewhere.

2. The stingrays in the Gulf of Mexico the other day that freaked me out. Thank goodness I didn’t see them my first day in the water or I would not have gone back in.

3. The afternoon thunder, lightning, rain and wind storms. Some of them were downright scary

4. Having to check out of my room by 10:00 AM tomorrow morning. But that is OK since my friend Jane will driving over from Ft. Myers and we will go out to breakfast. My choice for breakfast is the Lighthouse Café. I have wanted to eat there but had enough groceries or leftovers that I never went out to breakfast this week at all. I hopefully will walk around a bit in Old Town Sanibel and take some photos. Then I will spend the day at Jane’s apartment pool until she takes me to the airport.

5. There is only one taxi service on this small island. The minimum rate is $10.00 even if you only want to go 2 miles. I kept telling myself it was cheaper than if I had rented a car. Tonight I took a taxi to dinner at a restaurant 3.8 miles away. When I was ready to leave I asked the manager to call me a taxi and I would be waiting downstairs. He came down after a few minutes and told me that the taxi service said it would be quite awhile before someone could pick me up because all of the taxis were tied up at the airport. You would think that they could have told me there would be an issue when I called 1 ½ hours earlier to get picked up to go to The Timbers. A couple of minutes later the manager told me to come with him. He had a young lady who could drive me home as soon as she finished what she was doing. Apparently she has done this before. I told her not to argue with me about giving her the money I would have given the taxi driver. Not only was my dinner excellent but you can’t beat that kind of customer service that I received. The restaurant was The Timbers.

Here are a few more photos of the property at the Sunshine Island Inn.

Oodles of noodles in a bucket. I thought the noodles with my float in the background made for a colorful photo.

Filed under: Travel, vacations | Tagged: Sanibel, vacation |