Tuesday, April 4, 2023

Dress Code

I am planning a trip to Virginia Beach. It's for business, not pleasure. Trust me, I wouldn't willingly put myself into that tangle of cloverleafs, bridges, tunnels, and heavy traffic if I didn't have to. 

I was going to use Nuria's Garmin, but it doesn't have a toll-avoidance feature, and my Jeep doesn't have EZ-Pass, so I have to use a different map. I plotted the trip on Google Maps and sent the map to my phone. My phone has Waze, which is a Google app, so I think it will work out better. With Google, I can avoid tolls, meaning I can avoid tunnels. And besides, who likes paying $7 every time they go through a tunnel. Double that amount if you include a return trip, and I most definitely will be returning.

Virginia Beach is right beside Norfolk. Using the road-view of Google Maps, I made a short tour of the boardwalk on my PC. It brought back memories of a trip to Virginia Beach that I made many years ago with my family when I was a teenager. 

Our family was touring Virginia Beach, planning on getting a room, but it was lunch time and so we stopped at a hotel. We entered the hotel and approached the dining room. An employee was guarding the doorway, and he wouldn't let us enter the dining room. He explained that my father couldn't enter because he wasn't wearing a sport coat and tie. 

What?! This is Virginia Beach, not some fancy Manhattan dinner club. You mean guests at a beach hotel can't enter the hotel's restaurant unless they're "dressed up"? Plans to stay at that hotel were immediately canceled. In fact, my dad was so outraged that he canceled plans to stay anywhere in Virginia Beach, and we returned home.

We never returned to Virginia Beach, but we made plenty of vacation trips to North Carolina's Outer Banks. There, if you wanted, you could go to a restaurant wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and sandals, and plenty of people did that. On the Outer Banks our money was good everywhere, and there was never a dress code. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Greetings

This is a delightful post -- I love your descriptions and your humor --- I also enjoy reading about the stories of you as a young boy with your family.

You write with the best descriptive words I believe I have ever read. I wish I could write as well as you do.

This trip seems like one you are not looking forward to going on. I imagine that once you get started it will turn into a fun time for you both. I bet you will stop along the way with a picnic lunch so you don't have to go to a hotel dining room. I can see you all now taking loads of pictures of some beautiful scenery as you do now at your home.

I've been in and around the areas you'll be navigating so I can picture this scene. It does sound as if you've done everything possible to plan out each step of the way.

Except : ----- Smile and Enjoy the sun, water and the sweetness of a successful trip.

Don't forget to make a list and check it twice of each item you will need during your visit -but I imagine you both have done it.

If Nuria has not been to this area -- I do hope you all will forget those old memories and make some new ones to replace them.

Be safe and keep the light on.

Best, LL

Anonymous said...

Good morning!

Be positive and see this trip as a benefit for both of you. I'm sure that Nuria has an appointment for his residency which it means that very soon she will be a resident of USA and more worries about if she is going to be deported or if Immigration doesn't allow her to get into the country.

It's not a long trip and you will enjoy it. Take your time, drive carefully, no stress. Everything will be ok and after her appointment, you will be willing to walk around the beach and have a nice meal.

You're right, doctors, dentists in Costa Rica are cheaper than US. I think your Government needs to think about to make some changes.There are many people that can not afford one and owe a lot of money because they can not pay those high amounts of money.

Good luck on this!

Very nice post, thank you.

TA