Revenge of the No-Brainers

I was fooled by the trip to Spain prize on the contest box and so found myself at a sales pitch for vacation time shares a few months back. Although the Pacific Shores resort itself is actually quite beautiful( peaceful gardens and right on the water), the whole Aviawest sales pitch was high pressure and annoying. I don't recommend it to anyone.

Our salesman( I'll call him "Skip" because I forget his real name, but he seemed like a Skip, or maybe a Brad)was all tan and white teeth and obviously thought he was a very smooth fellow with the clients. But he lost his nice smile, stopped complimenting our obvious intelligence, and got all pissy at the end when we tried to leave without signing away thousands of dollars on the spot.

"Look, it's a no-brainer, people!", he insisted. "If you don't take this deal now, it's gone in four hours, and then you'll be kicking yourselves!"

Yes, Skip, it's a "no-brainer", which is why we left as quickly as we could. Beware the Aviawest prize trap, people, beware! Don't be fooled by the pretty box on the counter-top at your local grocery store!

But for our pain, we DID receive one hundred dollars worth of coupons good for the restaurant and spa there. They were only good for a couple of months, so Jeff and I came to the realization that we better use them up quick so that we get something for our two hours of resisting the charms of Aviawest's sales goons. (Note: I'd be nicer to them if they HAD given me a trip to Spain in all fairness.)

We called our friend Pol up and invited her to lunch at the restaurant there, the West Coast Landing Grill. It was good food I have to say, and we had some nice wine, a red from Italy called Montepulciano D'Abruzzo. Montepulciano is a little town in Italy where I was ever so briefly under the Tuscan sun and so it seemed like a nice wine to discuss our trip to Italy which Pol and I are planning for 2007.

There are two floor-to ceiling fish tanks in the restaurant that are filled with salmon and rockfish and gigantic sunflower-starfish. It must be a huge job maintaining them because they were gorgeous tanks. At one point a resort employee leaned a ladder against the fish tank and began to feed the fish great clouds of squid parts and chopped herring and krill. The fish went nuts gobbling up their lunch. It gathered quite a crowd.

Then the three of us headed down to the spa to blow the other fifty dollars. It doesn't take long in a shop like that. (HOW much for nail polish?! I don't think so!) I think the best item of all were our new faux-diamond toe-rings. Well, Pol and I got one. Poor Jeff didn't get much of anything there. Although the little octopus in the fish tank there was fascinating to watch. I got the impression its buggy eyes were watching us too as it squished around inflating and deflating its head at us.

You can't get money for change from the coupons so we made sure we squeezed all but thirty-six cents out of them. :)

So take that Aviawest! We have toe rings and a good lunch on you, and we KEPT our thousands of dollars! MOOOOWAAAHAHA!