Where Not to Eat

When we moved to North Carolina and took the first of what were many trips to visit our friends in Charleston, South Carolina, we could not help but notice the billboards advertising a place called "Pedro's South of the Border." Every couple of miles without fail we would see an advertisement reminding us that in X miles we would have the opportunity to stop at Pedros. Our personal favorite was always the billboard with the big hot dog on it, that said "You're Always a Wiener at Pedro's South of the Border."

When we were driving home from the Florida Keys I woke up from a nap and found that Ken and Russ had decided that we would stop for lunch at Pedros. Finally the questions we'd had all of those years would be answered...

Our first stop was the cafeteria style restaurant.

The service was surly and the food, while edible, was nothing to write home about.

After we ate I went into the gas station store to look for batteries. "Sorry," I was told, "batteries are in the convenience shop across the street." I went across the street and asked for batteries. "Sorry," I was told, "This is the Pantry. The convenience store is next door." When I finally found the store with the batteries I was shocked to see the sales clerk write up a receipt for me by hand, using a piece of carbon paper! I think Pedro's needs to come into the 21st century!

Our final experience with Pedro's was the restroom. Huge industrial sized restrooms, with stall after stall. Nasty, smelly, wet, gross restrooms. The kind of restrooms in the nightmares of every potty-training mom.

I think we will not be stopping at Pedro's again....