Part II ~ Palace Blue

(Dear Readers, please see entry below for Part I—PP is still not quite sure how to handle the organization of chaptered entries since the blog automatically places the most recent entry first. However, she’s certain that you, Dear Readers, will figure it out, yes?)


O Glorious Christmas morn at the Palace Hotel. Room service (Hey, it’s Christmas and everything’s closed. Perfect excuse to spring for the $25 coffee and puny pastry basket. But the little individual jams are cute—blackberry and orange marmalade!) A bit of frisky play on the King-size bed, then PP runs to check out the pool! Yes! Their room has a view of the pool’s domed top and if you look closely, you can see if anyone is swimming! Can you believe that? Only a swimming kitty would get a room with the check-out if it’s crowded in the pool vista!

But this Christmas day, it’s so lovely. The San Francisco Skyscraper sky is a bright vivid blue. The air in sunshiny crisp. And yes, there are some splashers in the pool, so why not a walk first and then the pool?

At the time, PP felt a twinge of misgiving. She really just wanted to spend the entire day at the pool, but on the other hand, how often do you get a perfect walking day in San Francisco in December? Rare rare rare is this. Plus, she figured she could swim after the walk, right?

And the walk was divine. Down Mission street to the Embarcadero. A new building on the grassy knoll next the giant tacky bow and arrow sculpture. PP is convinced that there’s a pool in this new building, peering through the chain link fence, trying to decipher what its interior holds.

“The sign says here that it’s gonna be A Bar and Grill Smokehouse,” DHBF announces.
“Are you sure?” PP continues to peer through the fence. “It really looks like there’s a pool in there! Wouldn’t this be the perfect place for a pool, overlooking the bay with a view of Treasure Island and the Bridge?”
DHBF chuckles. Not everything is a pool he reminds her.





PP is hard pressed to believe this, but decides against arguing the point on this glorious day. After all, it is Christmas. The time of spiritual giving and such shit.

Personally, PP’s religion is the pool. But unfortunately she’s had little time to organize a special holiday for her faith.

Yet there is a hint of her Faith on this walk. At Aquatic Park the insane Polar Bear swimmers are out in the frigid bay. Hell, they don’t even wear wet suits! PP admires their dedication and does understand it on a watery level, but hell, you’d never get her in that 54 degree water! Then picnicking at Washington Square Park, she spies another member of her church. A gimping geezer in flip-flops and wet suit (Yes, he was limping round the park in his full wet suit!) hollering at the top of his lungs. “I’m looking for someone to go swimming with me! Hey! Will you go swimming with me?” he hails a passing Chinese woman laden with pink plastic bags. She gives him a look of crazed bewilderment as she scurries by. She’s NOT a member of His Church! But he does find someone. With the next holler a sprightly elderly North Beach Poet type slings her arm round his wet suited waist. “Sure I’ll go for a swim!”
“Hot Dog!” he cries, as he drapes his arm over her shoulders and guides her back through the park to the sea.

After lunch, walking briskly down Montgomery Street back to the Palace and the Pool, PP is stricken with the goddamn shooting pain headaches again. DAMN!!!! Wretched Wind! Maybe if she can just get to the Palace and lie down and take some Advil she’ll be ok to swim in an hour or so.

It was not to be. PP lay in the lovely King size bed writhing and whining in earache agony. How could this happen? She’d come all the way to the Palace Hotel to swim at the little pool and now this?

DHBF looked after her in his warm caring worried way. Getting her water and cookies. Telling her how the pool still looked really crowded. PP wasn’t buying it, but was too sick to even stand up and look at the pool from their window. Damn. Damn. Damn! What was she gonna do?

Nothing for now. She drifted off in a headachy doze for a few hours while DHBF went down to the festive lobby to gawk and make phone calls. PP was near tears, but didn’t have the energy to cry. Besides, if she did cry, it would only make the headache worse!

Later that evening, the headache had somewhat abated, but not enough to even contemplate for a moment a swim. DHBF sat by the bed, sifting through the room service menu and various pamphlets. “Hey, look at this. Here’s a guide to all of the Palaces in Europe. I bet you could take a Palace Pool tour.”
PP sniffled.
“Here, let’s see where you could go. Vienna…. Oslo. Frankfurt….Venice. Florence. Stockholm…. London…..wait, no London’s Palace doesn’t’ have a pool…..”
”Stupid London,” PP snorts. “Of course they wouldn’t have a pool there!”
DHBF shakes his head. “I don’t know why you hate London so much. You must have had a really bad experience there.”
”Yeah, all it did was rain and there’s no pool at their palace!”
“Hey, listen to this one,” he pauses as a slow grin comes across his handsome visage. “The Blue Palace Resort and Spa on the island of Crete.”
PP smiles to herself. Of course Crete is gonna have a great Pool Palace. It’s such an enchanted place. Plus isn’t that the island where Daryl Hannah had the three way with the Archeologist and the Doctor in ‘Summer Lovers’?



DHBF read on, excited by his find of the Blue Palace. “Experience a resort of exceptional quality. The Blue Palace is the perfect destination with its combination of natural beauty, deluxe accommodations, terracotta colors, and endless blue from the 106 private pools and the serene waters of the Cretan Pelagos Sea….”
“106 POOLS!!!!????” PP sat up in bed. “Did you say 106 pools?”
“Yup! Listen to this; all 79 bungalows and the 3 private villas each have their own private pool. The pools are seawater, but can be changed to freshwater upon request!”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Yes, hello, Michos, can you please change the seawater in my private pool to freshwater. I’ve had too much seawater for one day swimming in the Pelagos Sea ….” DHBF chuckles at the imaginary request.



PP shakes her head. There’s a place on this earth with 106 pools?
“Also there are two outdoor pools and one indoor heated pool,” he continues to read.
“Plus the 106 private pools?”
“Yup.”
“That makes for a total of 109 pools! I have to go there!” PP’s mind reels. She must go to this Blue Palace. There was no question in her medicated congested mind. 109 pools? All in one place? She could bring all of her friends. JL and the Lovely I and Ms W and of course, DHBF! Why this would be the perfect place to establish her Church of the Pool too! But how was she ever going to make it to Crete? Here she was at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, and she couldn't even make it down the hall to the enchanting pool here!





Later that night, PP drifted off into an uneasy sickly sleep, but her dreams were filled with blue pools nestled on palm treed hillsides overlooking a turquoisy sea with Daryl Hannah in a gold bikini sipping fruity cocktails as she lounged by the side of one of the Blue Palace’s 109 blue blue pools, one lanky leg dangling in the water as she watched with lazy dreamy eyes, PP swimming back and forth and back and forth in her own private Blue Palace Pool!



~to be continued~