After having a great time at the ball game and not wanting this experience to end, Mom and I returned to our hotel room to freshen up and headed back towards Downtown Fort Myers to find an inexpensive sports bar to have dinner and enjoy ourselves among several of the "Faithful" as Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan call the thousands of devout Red Sox fans.
I am not a big fan of driving in downtowns, and Fort Myers turned out to be another frustrating place to drive around in. The map we got from the ball game showing where many of the restaurants were located was not drawn out right, and after driving on Cleveland Avenue (SR 41), I turned around to get back towards the downtown and was able to do so onto McGregor.
So Mom and I are in the downtown looking for Dean Street, which is home to one of the bars that is one of the Red Sox Spring Training sponsors. The ad said it had food and drink and a good time, but after driving around the downtown looking for Dean Street (a little side street) and free parking (there is a big parking lot on McGregor), we finally walked over to the bar which was packed with Red Sox fans and St. Patrick Day revelers. The only food on the menu that night was Corned Beef and Cabbage (UGH!). When I finally flagged down a waitress to ask for a menu, she said there wasn't a menu for food. GRRR! Mom and I left, and I told Mom that my store manager was right about customer service. Even though you are busy as a one-armed paper hanger, you have to take a second to acknowledge new customers, and we were pretty much ignored.
After we left Dean Street, we went further into the downtown to look at other restaurant options, but they were way out of our budget range. I am more like Rachael Ray's $40 A Day and would rather pay $20-$30 for two meals rather than that amount for one meal. By this time, I was resigned to the fact of getting out of the Downtown and heading back towards North Fort Myers to a restaurant near our hotel. Hell! I would have been happy having food brought to the hotel, but Mom and I wanted to have at least one meal in a restaurant.
Once again getting back to SR 41 was a pain in the butt with one way roads and crappy signage. Mom and I did catch a glance of Thomas Edison's winter home on McGregor in our adventure, but it was too late for a tour. Maybe next year, I thought to myself. I just wanted to get out of the Downtown and be near our hotel.
Mom and I finally got back onto SR 41 and stopped for gas at a Sunoco station where the manager said that there are a lot of nice and inexpensive restaurants across the bridge and wouldn't have trouble finding one. I was so happy to be across that bridge and after 7 p.m., Mom and I had the luck to find Jerseys Sports Cafe and had one of the best meals of our life with great service and a cute owner named Burt to flirt with.
Next year, Mom and I will be better prepared for Fort Myers and I don't care, I will eat in Jerseys every night we stay in Fort Myers just to avoid the traffic!