Beach Week 2011...The New Cottage

So as I mentioned in my last post, we had to find a new cottage for our annual OBX trip this year.  Mom found it through a friend, who I think found it on Craig's List.  Anyway, we were told it had a ground floor apartment and that a very quiet young man lived there.  Ok, that would be different, weird, but we decided the place looked decent.  It was only 4 blocks north of where we were used to staying, had the amenities we were used to and did not cost too much more than what we paid for the Beach Shack.  Shortly before we left to go down, the owner informed us that the downstairs tenant had moved out and that she (the owner) would be coming down for a few days.  Turns out she's the paranoid owner type coming to check up on us. At least that's how we felt.

So my first impression of this new place? Try stale cigarette smoke! Ugh. For someone who has been treated for bronchitis 9 times in 2 years, this was not a good beginning. The can of Fabreze that we had to buy helped, but we had to keep spraying all week.  Later on when Mom mentioned this to the owner, she said she doesn't allow renters to smoke in her cottage.  Well obviously somebody broke the rules. In addition to the cigarette spoke we also had smoky evenings due to the wildfire burning further south.

There were plenty of other rules too.  Was this a prison or a beach cottage for goodness sakes? The place was plastered in sticky notes with all the does and don'ts.  The first one I encountered was taped to the top of the toilet tank - "Septic - toilet paper only." Okay, that's a pretty reasonable request. Another one instructed us not to bring brown paper bags from the stores into the house because they bring roaches.  North Carolina's larger retailers (Wal-Mart, Kmart and Food Lion, etc.) have to use paper instead of plastic bags.

There was another sticky note that instructed us to leave the blinds closed during the day to keep the rooms cool and energy costs down, so I was cringing when my husband decided to open all the blinds and the windows one day.

Soon enough we found ourselves wondering about different things around the house and thought surely there's a sticky note for that!  So at least we eventually found some humor in it.

The highlights of the trip included taking Bubba to see Kung Foo Panda 2 - it was rather good and kept his attention. We also took him to play putt-putt for the first time at Jurassic Put - Bubba liked the Dinosaurs.  But then the next day he was begging to play at the place with the pirate ship.  I skipped this trip, and it was a cooler place with a train that Bubba and Honey got to ride to their course.

All in all we had GREAT weather - no rain until Sunday when we were packing to leave.  Unfortunately, when I got home I realized that we had brought that nasty smoke smell home in all our clothes - including the brand new ones I had purchased down there and my pillow!  This was not, as the sign on the dining room wall stated, "Best Little Vacation House in the Outer Banks" by any means, and we will probably be looking for a new place next year!