After seeing the Everglades we worked our way slowly up the west coast of Florida. We stopped briefly in Naples, after a friend recommended it, and we found it very pleasant and pretty, but there were a lot of white-table-cloth restaurants which were a bit too posh!
The next morning we started the day bright and early at Fort Myers. This is a quaint pleasant little town, with lots of law firms I thought. It is perhaps apt therefore that I found myself incarcerated there… in a toilet in Subway Sandwich. Humph. Basically the handle wouldn’t open. Feeling slightly ridiculous, I knocked on the door and called out “hello??”, and I waited patiently. After a while I realised that the noise from the extractor fans would mean that no-one would hear me knocking, and the toilets are at the back of the restaurant. Feeling even more ridiculous, I started to bang on the door, shouting “Hello??” “Is anyone there??” and then finally “HELP!!”.
I started to look around the toilet, like they do in films, expecting a panic button or a window I could crawl out of. But there was no way out. and it was nothing like the films. I was starting to worry that I might run out of air… or food. (Even though I’d JUST had a massive sub?!) Eventually I started to worry about my car which was parked on a meter, and I got annoyed – I should have been enjoying my two hours in Fort Myers, rather than having an intimate encounter with the town’s toilet facilities.
And where was my boyfriend in all this? Reclining on a bench in the sunshine, outside on the pavement, without a care in the world. Grounds for divorce, I’m sure. In the end, after about 20 minutes, a lady heard me banging and came to let me out. I was quite upset about being stuck in a toilet for so long, but my boyfriend said that it was “so you”. Humph.
After that we went to the post office to buy a postage stamp. I asked the lady who worked there what colour post-boxes are in America. She didn’t know. She asked her colleague, who also didn’t know. Which is very strange to me – how does anyone, but especially postal workers, not know what colour a post box is? Anyhoozle, with these adventures under our belts we left Fort Myers. Although it was a pretty town, I was kinda glad to be leaving the scene of the toilet-lock-in!
We drove North, stopping at anything interesting en route. We stopped at Venice beach and paddled in the sea, but the shells were sharp under-foot so we moved on. We came across Siesta Key purely by chance – the sun was about to set so we made a bee-line for the nearest beach and that happenned to be it. As luck would have it, Siesta Key is rated one of the best beaches in the USA! It has the most perfect powdery white sand, almost like snow! We watched the sunset from the beach, which was beautiful.
After a brief stop in Sarasota where we were joined near the harbour by 3 police cars, we decided not to join in the law enforcement party and instead get the hell out of there… destination Clearwater!
Next blog: Clearwater, Florida.
Previous blog: The Everglades, Florida
Big Fat Tourist 
Oh woe! I have a phobia about public (even restaurant) toilets. My fear, that the mechanism won’t release and I’ll be locked in. AND YOU WERE. Fuel for my fire!
I’m glad you still sound pretty sane and casual after the toilet malfunction. I wouldn’t. (Fort Myers is actually a pretty nice town as Florida towns go.)
Ha ha! That made me laugh! I know, it is horrific but I did get out in one piece and relatively sane, if that helps at all…! I would take a phone with you just in case! Or tell someone where you’re going and that they should come after you if you don’t come back in 5 minutes. It sounds a bit extreme – it’s not like you’re going mountaineering – but believe me, it helps! 😉