one of the things i loved about europe is that when you sit down in a restaurant, that table is yours for the rest of the night. this is particularly true in france where meals can take hours. once, at a very formal dinner, we started at 7 p.m. and ended after midnight.

this is not the case in the states, where the staff is constantly trying to get you out the door (best example so far is the thai place that served us three courses and had us paid and out in 20 minutes flat).

well, i've finally found the place where you can sit for hours and no one will bother you: the "friday's" in gatlinburg, tennessee.

mike and i were wandering around there this summer (as i may have told you) and we decided that we needed wireless internet. we thouht perhaps the fridays might have it, so we went there. it was around 3:30 in the afternoon and pretty dead.

mike went to the bathroom, i pulled out my laptop and checked the internet. no luck.

regardless, we thought we'd have to order a coke or something to excuse the fact that we were in there at all. boy, were we wrong. several waiters walked right by us, helped the people in the tables around us and they didn't glance at us, not once - not even when we started playing chinese checkers to entertain ourselves till they brought water or SOMETHING.

after some 30 minutes, we just got up and left. no internet but no hassles? the fridays in gatlinburg. highly recommended.