Shark Valley and 1909 Cafe

"I'm sorry, we're not open", said the young lady at the counter at 1909 cafe, when GS and I came in at 2pm on a Friday.
"You're not?", said I.
"Yes, we are", said in a slightly exasperated tone by her co-worker.

1909 cafe has awesome sandwiches, so awesome I can forgive the counter staff for being comedians (I can forgive a girl almost anything if she's cute), so awesome I can forgive the clever names they give their sandwiches, so awesome I wish I worked there.  Seriously, if I didn't need benefits like health insurance and didn't have rent to pay (not to mention my shoe obsession), I'd love to work in a sandwich or smoothie or salad place, one with genuinely good food and a relaxed, casual, happy atmosphere.  Being practical is rarely fun.

I had the Italian Stallion (see, I told you about their names) and GS had Chicken Pesto.  The sandwiches came on French baguettes, my favorite sandwich bread, with the ripest, reddest, tomatoes ever.  I keep sopping up the oil and vinegar that would drop off the sandwich with the bread.  The meal came with tantalizing little containers of pasta salad that were savory with tomato and roasted red pepper.  A couple of grape sodas topped it all off.

We were both starving because we had ridden the fifteen mile trail at Shark Valley earlier.  It was tough, but for some things I'm oddly competitive; I told myself I was only allowed to rest at the observation tower.  There was some wind but luckily the weather was not excruciatingly hot.  The rain that came earlier (a cold front it was called on the news, hahaha!!!) probably cooled things off a bit.  I had my shiny, fixed up bike to ride but GS had to rent one of the single gear clunkers from them, which was good because it gave him a bit of a handicap.  He's much more athletic and in shape than me and I didn't want to make a bad impression.  I did show those little kids and old people who was queen of the trail!  I got the Everglades park pass so I can go back-I really don't feel comfortable riding bike in traffic.  And, then again, it's nice riding in nature-we saw many, many alligators, soft shelled turtles, and what I believe are Great Blue Herons, and Anhingas?  Very big, pretty birds?  Yup.