Dinner tonight was one to remember. But not for the reasons one hopes to remember a night out of vacation.
We drove back to Sitges from Barcelona since Kaitlyn was in no state to go to a restaurant and the nap she took in the car did her a world of good.
We had planned on driving down the mail beach street in town to see if anything looked good. But it was blocked off. Neither of us felt like wandering the street in the pouring rain, so we just went back to the hotel. Besides, pizza from the pizza place there sounded fine.
Getting a table wasn’t easy. Oh, the restaurant wasn’t full. And we were about to find out why. The waiter successfully ignored us while we stood there waiting to be seated. We should have taken that hint; we didn’t. Kaitlyn had me read her the menu and when I got to the second thing, her mind was made up. Shrimp tortellini.
We closed our menus… the international signal of one’s desire to order… and waited… and waited… and waited. People who’d come in after us had their food and the waiter hadn’t so much as nodded his head at us. We asked Kaitlyn if she’d eat something else at another restaurant. No way. Shrimp tortellini. After about 45 minutes of waiting, Bill walked up to the bar where the water was attempting to ignore several people trying to pay their bills. The waiter acknowledged our existence, so Bill came back to the table. Then I stared in disbelief as the waiter actually left the restaurant. Kaitlyn stood fast to her refusal to leave and after the display of screaming after the gift shop incident, we were not ready to see if she’d do that again. So I left the restaurant to find a solution. I walked across the hall to another restaurant to beg them to bring Kaitlyn shrimp tortellini if Bill and I would order from their menu. I couldn’t get that waiter to notice me, either. So I went to the front desk to complain. The response was barely above so? I stomped back into the restaurant to see the waiter at our table. I heard him say he’d come back to take my order and I actually hollered across the restaurant Oh no you don’t! You aren’t leaving my table after taking 45 minutes to go to it! As I sprinted past the other diners, I realized I probably looked pretty stupid. But, then again, none of them appeared to be having fantastic service and maybe were secretly happy that someone yelled about it.
As we waited for our food we noticed the cook was so fed up he had started delivering meals to the tables himself, rather than let food get cold waiting on the waiter. The French family at the table next to us got up to find the waiter so they could pay their bill. In France you can wait all night for the check to arrive and even they thought he took too long.
When the food did finally arrive, Kaitlyn’s didn’t look right. I cut one of her tortellini open and there was no sign of shrimp. It was something green. (Which if that was shrimp, shouldn’t have been eaten.) I tried it… no shrimp. She tried it and said It has a good flavor. And she ate it. And we never pointed out to her that it was wrong. Although it was frustrating since we’d only sat there as long as we had so that she could have shrimp tortellini.
After we paid, Bill questioned the wisdom of giving the waiter our room number. I don’t think that waiter is smart enough to do anything to get back at us. We’ll see who’s right.
I can just picture Miss Mandy storming through the restaurant screaming at the waiter. It sounds like the boiling point to which I occasionally reach, and she and I would handle it exactly the same way. My last fit was a few months ago in the Burbank airport, in fact….a little dangerous considering there’s all those guards around to calm frustrated people down by locking them up for a while.