once in a lifetime

As you know, when we go somewhere, we tend to get there and then book a little side trip somewhere, and this time was no exception. Since we knew were were going to the Everglades, we decided that instead of coming back to Sarasota for our last night, we would take a little detour. I looked up good places to find shells, and the results were pretty unanimous: Sanibel Island. So then I went to one of those travel booking sites and picked the cheapest room that would accommodate all five of us. We've had mixed results doing this; sometimes some of us have to sleep on the floor, or the room has structural issues or cleanliness issues, and sometimes it's perfectly fine. This time it was neither.

We arrived at our very reasonably priced hotel shortly after check-in time started, looking -- and frankly, smelling -- like we had spent the day mucking around in the Everglades. Imagine our surprise when we entered a giant marble lobby with an entire wall of windows overlooking the Gulf of Mexico and a massive chandelier overhead! And if you can get past that mental picture, imagine our jaws dropping and our eyes widening as the concierge handed us bracelets that allowed us to take advantage of free bike, kayak, and paddleboard rentals, then gave us a set of cards that would allow us to check out fresh beach/pool towels, and then followed that up by handing us cards that would allow us to charge things to our room ... for example, dinner from one of the four on-site restaurants, or perhaps something from the full grocery store. Imagine the glances that passed between us; they clearly communicated, "What have we done? There's obviously been some mistake here!"

But no, there wasn't actually a mistake. So we signed the papers and got our room keys and drove around to one of the other buildings on the ... I can only call it a campus. And it turns out that our "room" was a two-bedroom, two-bath condo overlooking the Gulf. Here's the view from our bedroom:

And this is the view from our private screened-in balcony:

I'll give you a minute or two to pick up your jaws.

Anyway, we wasted no time pulling on our suits, checking out our fancy towels, and heading down to the private beach (!!!), where we frolicked in the water and found tons of interesting shells. We stayed until a storm rolled in and the wind picked up and it was getting too dark to see what we were doing. Then we headed back up to our room, everyone took showers, and we ordered pizza from the on-site pizzeria, because really, what else could we do? And now we're all sad that we only get to live in this splendor for one night, because we could totally get used to being high rollers.