Mississippi

I feel lucky to be back flying again for my beloved 65 year old charter airline. She feeds my travel addiction needs very well. LOL. Not that taking me to Biloxi, Mississippi was on my bucket list but it is a sunny beautiful day and we have 48 hours here. Picked up at the airport in a Hummer stretch limousine provided by King Limo Biloxi we could feel like celebrities. And our hotel is just across from the beach. We could literally walk out barefooted and dig our toes into the fine white sand of the narrow beach, if only highway 90 was not so close to the water. Today I took a walk downtown and found out the distance was further than I appreciated. It took me about 50 minutes to get there and I walk at a good speed. Once there, walking trough the streets, I found not much of interest. This is a  gambling and sea food lover’s paradise, neither of the two groups I belong to. Looking for vegetarian food I found none, so I walked back to my hotel, happy that I asked Mike to cook before I left and that I had carried my own food with me. Yesterday we had food across the street. The place had vegetarian quesadillas on request. They were OK but Mike makes them even better. I call them flip-flops since he flips them in the frying pan in an expert way. He should open a restaurant. He loves cooking. The restaurant is called Shaggy’s and the place was good. I can recommend it for sea food and drinks on the beach. Shaggy’s seems to be very popular. Lots of people and a great beach view.  Not fancy – just relaxed and beachy. If you prefere fancy, I discovered an old French restaurant downtown. Called Mary Mahoney’s Old French House, it was built in 1737 and it has a great atmosphere, a beautiful yard and it is near the downtown casinos. Walking by U.S. Route 90/Highway 90 I was weighing my options for a day in the sun. The sidewalk  separates the road from the nice mansions and, even if their yard is green, the white sand is often covering the sidewalk. One option calls for the white powdery beach, as the narrow strip of land before the water is inviting. Yet, the water …. not so inviting. The color is not enticing and the big pipes running into the water make you wonder. Remembering the oil spill not so long ago makes me think of the other option: the hotel’s pool. Oh but wait! That is surely full of bleach and I still remember the demonstration on how skin (which is the biggest organ we posses) is absorbing all that fast. So now my options do not appear that great: pool full of bleach or the Gulf Of Mexico where the oil spill happened. Hmm…. does our species pollute and destroy too much of this  planet? Am I strange for being vegetarian in a land where the norm is “eat the fish” and any sea creatures, not to mention the mammals and birds? Funny to think that people eat any living creatures we get our hands on? Consider that over the world you can find all kinds of foods. From bugs, snails, spiders, rats and snakes to dear, horses, pigs, zebras and further. Which one you consider normal to eat depends of  where you were raised and where you live. Oh, well…. I’ll go to the beach!