My Real Life

So, you’ll remember from my last post that we ate dinner at Upper Crust pizza.

I awoke on Friday morning at 4 am.

From 4 am to 8 am, I haunted the bathroom of our hotel room, vomiting every last bit of food and moisture out of my body.

First thing to come up…

…the pizza.

Hence my assertion that it was, in fact, the pizza that made me sick.

(Real Man remains unconvinced, as he didn’t suffer any ill effects.)

(Have I mentioned his stomach of steel?)

By the time Real Man woke up at 8, I was starving and shaking from low blood sugar.

So, we hit the continental breakfast that the Inn had to offer.

I was so dehydrated, I drank about 7 glasses of orange juice and had a piece of toast.

Better.

We decided to go to the House of the Seven Gables.

It was a dark, dreary and cold day.

Perfect, for Salem.

We paid our money for the tour and waited by the waterfront.

Did I mention how dark and dreary it was?

So, we finally get inside, and as the tour goes on, I start feeling poorly again.

Room by room we tour the house, and in each room, my face is more flushed, my hands are more trembly and I’m feeling more faint.

But, I trek on.

I don’t like public scenes.

We went through the awesome secret staircase, built behind the fireplace, and it renewed my love of old, historic homes.

The tour finally ended and we headed to the car.

As we sat there, we decided that, maybe, I was just hungry.

So, Real Man starts reading the names of local restaurants we could hit.

One of them was called “In a Pig’s Eye” and as soon as he said it, I had visions of a pig over a fire on a spit and my stomach finally rebelled.

I hopped out of the car, ran to the front where there were some bushes and recreated the projectile vomit scene from The Exorcist.

It was awful and it wouldn’t stop.

Would. Not. Stop.

I mean, obviously it eventually stopped or I wouldn’t be here, typing this, today, but you know what I’m saying.

Once it did stop, I stood up, brushed myself off and felt 100% better.

We went to lunch and then walked around Salem for a bit until the rain just started coming down WAY too hard for sane people to be outside.

So, we did what any parents of 3.5 children would do in the afternoon while on a romantic weekend away without the kids.

We went back to the inn and napped for a few hours.

It was divine.

When we woke, we decided to brave the weather and head out to find some dinner.

We chose a restaurant called Rockafellas.

We went in, sat down and ordered.

I had really wanted soup, but they didn’t have any on the menu that were appealing to me, so I ordered pasta.

Real Man wanted a bowl of chili and a burger.

After we ordered, the waitress came back out from the kitchen and told Real Man, “I’m so sorry…now that it’s October we don’t serve any soup or chili on the weekends.”

Huh?

What?

Wouldn’t you START serving soup and chili in October, particularly the weekends when your place fills up with chilly tourists?

Whatever.

So, there we sit, chatting with each other when this guy comes out to serve the table next to us.

Apparently, at Rockafella’s, waiters and waitresses are allowed to dress up throughout the month of October.

This poor guy was the only person who decided to take them up on October 1st.

As we chatted, we also found this interesting drink advertisement on the table.

As a non-drinker, I’m not sure which part of this I enjoy more.

That the Helltini costs $20…

…or that you actually have to sign a waiver before you are allowed to drink it.

Anyway, we got a good chuckle over that, and then the mother/daughter pair at the table next to us were served.

The mom had some type of chowder and the daughter had a steaming, hot bowl of chili.

Excuse me?

Yes, that’s right.

Chili.

On a weekend.

In October.

I leaned over and said, “Excuse me, is that chili?”

They looked at me as if I was insane and said, “Um, yes,” when clearly what they wanted to say was “Um, obviously psycho chick!”

I said, “Okay, thanks!” and started glaring daggers at our waitress.

When I finally got her attention, she came over and I said, “Excuse me, but SHE got chili,” gesturing to our neighbor.

She was a little flustered, but their waitress happened to be there, as well, and explained to our waitress that they certainly DO serve chili on the weekends…it just wasn’t one of the specials that day.

Oh good lord.

Anyway, real man got his chili and burger, I got my pasta, and all was right with the world.

As we ate, the rain started up again, in earnest, and so after dinner, instead of exploring, we just headed back to the Inn.

So, Day 1 in Salem was fairly uneventful in the ways of the supernatural, however, highly entertaining, nonetheless.

Tune in tomorrow for Day 2 in Salem which was, by far, the most awesome of them all!