Sanibel Island Vacation Diary - Day 6Click the audio controls below to start the audio diary. The button in the center is the play button. You can control the volume with the slider on the left. The transcript is also included below. [7 minutes, 31 seconds]
Monday, June 20, 2005 Fred: It rained today, so we both stayed in, slept a little bit later. Actually, I got out of bed earlier than usual. Susan got out of bed later than usual, but it was raining and so when it rains, the typical thing to do is to go shopping But first we went to eat at the, this time for real when I say it, the Sanibel Café. There is a Sanibel Café and a Lighthouse Café, but the Sanibel Café is located in the Tahitian Gardens shopping center and that's a place where you can get food. I think they serve from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and they serve a variety of breakfast items and some interesting sandwiches and of course the typical dinner fare. It's a small restaurant, I guess that they have 15, 17 tables at the most. Very small, but it's interesting that all the tables have a glass cover over a table that's designed with shells. Somebody has taken a quantity of shells and arranged them in an interesting arrangement. So that's pretty interesting. We both got good meals there. I had just the breakfast meal, which I enjoy getting some pancakes and eggs and Susan had a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. And I think we got out of there for under, it was about $17, so you can have a good meal there for under $20 for two people.
We also went to the Periwinkle shopping center. That's a really large, I guess probably the largest shopping location on the island. It's covered shopping, so you can walk from store to store with cover and so that place gets packed any time it rains. There are always lots of people there, but a variety of stores selling t-shirts and home décor, beach-type items, high-end clothes, jewelry. There's a place that sells chocolate and they have some ice cream and there is a, some type of café, or some place that you can get some food to eat, but we've never eaten there, but it seemed to be pretty packed when we walked by. There is a spa. I believe there's a day spa on the second floor of that place, so if you need some pampering, that's a good place to go for that, I'm assuming. I haven't been there myself, but you'll find a lot of people there any time it rains. It's a nice place to go. Real well-kept grounds. We also went to She Sells Seashells, which is obviously a place that sells seashells. They have a couple of locations on the island. One near the end of Periwinkle on the west end and then, closer to the east end entrance to the island. It's one of the first things you'll see as you come into the island. Can't miss that. It's just a stand alone store, but that place is packed. They sell a wide variety of loose shells and you can buy bags of shells and they have different shells that people have taken and glued together and made into characters and Christmas tree ornaments and other things. They have lamps that have been made with shells and they even have some t-shirts in the back. So that's a neat little store if you want to bring home any shells if you can't find any on your own, but you should be able to do that if you have half an eye out on the beach. Then we went to a place further down, really near the end of Periwinkle on the east end. It's just across the street from the Lighthouse Café and in that place is a couple of stores, I think just two right now. The East End Deli and a place called Key Lime Clothing, which is where Susan likes to do some shopping and we came home from there. One of the things we did find and bought while we were out was a video that a local store owner and his wife had made as Hurricane Charley was approaching and then when it was hitting the island and then days after and they were showing their return to the island. That was a really neat video to see from a local perspective and to get their videos right after the storm took place and really get to see what the island looked like as it was still in the clearing process that was . . . they have a store in Tahitian Gardens called Needful Things and they had that video on sale there. So you might want to look for that. For dinner this evening we went to a place that we had never been to, which is a place called
Grandma Dots. And that's a restaurant that's built at the, I'm not sure, I guess it's the Sanibel Marina. It's just right there in the middle of all the boats. It's open air, with screens. It's an open air restaurant. Very good seafood. Susan and I both got shrimp. I got the Coconut Shrimp and she got just the Fried Shrimp and we actually met some relatives of Susan's who live in Ft. Myers. They came over to the island and took us to dinner and we had a great time. It was nice to find a new place in Sanibel. So you might want to check that out. A good place to eat. Probably, I guess they serve lunch/dinner, so check it out.
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