E’s job at The Very Nice Restaurant affords him a certain number of perks, including free nights and major discounts on food and services at several Very Nice Hotel chains, including the Ritz-Carlton, the Four Seasons, and some others all over the world.

On the advice of several of his coworkers, we went here:

Let’s get something out in the open right now. My family grew up going on camping trips for vacations. I’m totally good in a tent with a sleeping bag and eating food that’s been cooked over a fire or on a little camp stove. So, try and imagine my eyeballs when I saw that we got to stay here:

Here’s our hotel, smack in the middle of this beachside lineup.

Suffice to say, I felt a little country-come-to-town wandering around that place. I was constantly asking E who I was supposed to tip (anyone who arranges things for you or gives you something you asked for) and who I was not to worry about tipping (anyone who brings you something you didn’t ask for, or anyone who assists you while you are in a bathing suit and obviously do not have money).

I took advantage of the free steam room and the seven-headed shower in the spa, enjoyed the complimentary L’Occitane bath goodies every day, and got an amazing pedicure. We had one meal at the restaurant and one meal with room service just because we were feeling lazy. But beyond that, we really skipped out on all of the fuss and were just our normal, beer-and-burger kind of selves.

Except the Bud Light was $7 per bottle and the burger was made of grass-fed, free-range, pilates-doing, inner-peace-having cow, and cost $18. Plus tips.

Seriously? We actually stopped at the grocery store before we got to the hotel and loaded up on bread, cheese, lunchmeat, hot dogs, yogurt, fruit, beer, soda, and chips. We even brought the mini George Foreman grill down there with us so we could make hot sandwiches in the room. Even at the Four Seasons, and even with 50% off at their restaurant, we’re still cheap.

There were red flags on the beach much of the time, but we had some beautiful sunshine, enough for good walks and a 20-mile bike ride down the island.

This pier was about a ten-minute walk down the beach from our hotel, and it goes out to where the water is about 40 or 50 feet deep. We saw  a school flying fish being chased by barracudas – tricky to photograph, but so gorgeous. Here’s my attempted shot of the flying fish – look in the lower left of the picture.

The Four Seasons is on an island between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intercoastal Waterway. We had to go over a drawbridge to get pretty much anywhere, and for some sort of growing-up-landlocked reason, this totally thrilled me.

The ocean side was full of hotels, and the waterway side was lined with huge homes – some probably bigger than the hotel – where the supa-rich docked their supa-expensive boats.

It can be an expensive town. Even the taxis are Lincolns and Cadillacs. No, not just the Four Seasons club car. I mean the TAXI you wave down on the street. And even it has complimentary candies and bottled water.

We took a day to go deep-sea fishing, and although it started out kind of gray-ish, it ended up sunny and perfect (minus the first hour, in which I was uncomfortably – but not barfy – seasick). Here’s our little boat:

And here is E reeling in a freaking 7-foot sailfish.

Flickr Video

That was completely amazing. We ended up letting the fish go (as you can see) because we weren’t going to eat it, sell it, or mount it. That pinkish thing in its mouth is actually the fish’s stomach! Sailfish, I kid you not, will spit up their own stomachs to rid themselves of a hook if they can, and then gulp it back down once freed.

There’s your trivia for the day.

(And no, I didn’t catch anything.)

Aside from the bike ride and the fishing, we really spent most of the time just wandering the shore searching for coral and shells, laying around by the pool if it was nice or in our room if it was not. We only did one night out on the town and it was okay, but we chose to spend our last night in Palm Beach eating a delivery pizza  and watching movies instead of going back across the drawbridge.

It was just better that way.

Neither one of us could get more than two bars of cell service while we were on the island. I didn’t even get to read my guest bloggers’ posts until Saturday because we chose not to pay extra for wifi in the room. Although it was pretty frustrating to feel so disconnected at first, I have to admit that it was kind of sad to look down at my phone at the airport and see all the bars lit up again.

And, in keeping with the frugal nature of our swanky trip, I didn’t buy a single souvenir.

But I think I’ve got the best one right here anyway:

And that was our vacation.

Oh, it was cold up there. Good thing I had a little Bailey’s in the hot chocolate or I might have crumpled. 36 degrees in misty rain and gusting wind for four hours – people die of hypothermina in situations milder than that.

But the Cubs didn’t! We stayed till the very end and danced to “Go Cubs Go!” and waved the big “W” flag as the Colorado Rockies fled the field with frozen heads hung in shame.

It was so different to go to a game at good old Wrigley Field again – it was my first trip there in about twenty years. I’m so used to Busch Stadium with its millions of lights and colorful ads and Jumbotron. Even before the flashy new stadium was built in 2006, we had the lights and screens and music. There’s a Build-a-Bear (a Fredbird, really) inside Busch Stadium, along with an arcade and a million other things to divert you from the game you ostensibly came to see. In weather like we had on Monday, you probably wouldn’t have seen over 40,000 people sitting outside at a game in St. Louis. They’d be in the stadium bars and restaurants and watching the TVs and Jumbotron to see what was happening on the field. It’s not that we in St. Louis are necessarily big wusses, but it’s what’s available to us and so we take advantage of those things.

At Wrigley we had no choice. Go big or go home. We went big – literally, bundled up in layers of warmth and waterproofing, giving us an excellent cover for the bootlegged booze. We watched the game as it played out on the field, not a screen, and the scoreboard behind us was the old kind where you can see the person inside pull down the numbers and replace them. There were no instant replays. No trivia for the crowd. It was kind of heartwarming.

But you know, foot-warming might have been better. I couldn’t feel my toes for about three hours after we left, but it was such a wonderful day. A wonderful weekend, really. E and I did the roadtrip with some friends, and we all stayed at a Very Nice Hotel off Michigan Avenue for free, since it’s part of the family of hotels for which he works. Dinner the first night was at Morton’s with E’s dad, and I may or may not have had one too many vodka and Diet Cokes. E kept pinching me under the table to keep me from talking, lest I say something completely retarded in front of his AA dad. Oops.

And as usual, I forgot my expensive camera at home.

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Two Updates:

1. The girl who had dinner with George Clooney did NOT get fired. He got permission from the boss to take her to dinner – how’s THAT for slick? At the Very Nice Restaurant, the customer is always right.

2. While we were up there, we talked to Archie about the Vegas deal. Everything is still kind of up in the air.

E’s buddy Archie is the executive chef at a Very Nice Restaurant in Chicago. One of the managers of the Very Nice Restaurant is going to be opening a new branch of Very Nice Restaurant in one of the Very Nice Casinos in Las Vegas, and he has asked Archie to help open it and be the executive chef there. Archie and his wife say they are about 90% sure they’re going to take the offer – the money is better and the cost of living is lower in Vegas, and they figure that they could at least try it for a year or two and build up some savings, then come back to Chicago if they don’t like it out west.

Good deal for Archie, yes?

Archie told E that he’ll need a right-hand man to do this thing, and that’s a right-hand man who would get paid half again over what E makes now. That is some niiice money. E is tempted – and he wants me to go with him.

Sometimes it seems like things are kind of drying up for us in St. Louis. My job is okay, his job is okay. We’re stable enough, really. But our best friends are all splintering off and doing different things, moving away, moving on. E’s best friend here is moving to South Carolina in the summer and taking his girlfriend – one of my good friends – with him. It feels like things are happening somewhere and we’re missing out. Friends move and circles change, and maybe we shouldn’t be standing still. As E and I approach thirty, we’ve been looking forward and back and what we’ve done, haven’t done, and want to do. We talk about getting married and probably having a kid sometime in the future, but that’s not in the immediate plan. We want to have an adventure, and maybe an opportunity like this coming at this point in our lives is what we need. Maybe we need to blow this town for a couple of years.

There are a lot of what-ifs and whatnots. Archie might not take the job after all, and the whole scenario would be moot. The guy starting the restaurant could get worried about the state of the economy and bail out on his plans. If we go, I’d have to sell my house. E would have to support us both out there till I could get a job. We’d have to give our parents “The Talk” in which we inform them that not only are we moving, we’re moving in together. That’s a baddie on both counts for both of our families, so we’re not even bringing it up until we decide. Or we might just straight up freak out and decided not to go because we are big chickens. We wouldn’t be alone – Archie and his wife would be there with us, obviously – but it’s still scary as shiz and so exciting at the same time. No income tax, no humidity, houses that look like overgrown Taco Bells, nearby mountains, good golf, cheap airfare deals every weekend. And no family, no safety net, no toasted ravioli, no Provel cheese (well, HE wouldn’t miss that), and a significant increase in the moisturizer budget.

It’s huge. It’s crazy. I soooo want to do it. Today, anyway.

The timeline is such that we wouldn’t move till late summer or early fall – I think the Very Nice Restaurant is slated to open in October – so that means won’t have to decide until July or so. Neither of us have even been to Las Vegas before, so I think that once Archie tells us his decision, we’ll make a little reconnaissance trip if he says he and his wife are going.

Then it’s up to us.