Florida holiday

At the end of April, James and I flew down to Orlando for a five-day weekend. Well, for me it was a five-day weekend, for James, who had a conference Monday through Wednesday, it was a three-day weekend. It was awesome to have a mini-vacation that we hadn't planned on (the conference and the award came up rather suddenly).

We worked a half day on Thursday and flew down that afternoon. For our first two nights, we stayed at the Wyndham Resort in Orlando; for the rest of the vacation we stayed at the Contemporary Resort in Disney World, because Raytheon was paying for that. (The rate for the Contemporary? $285 a night. And that would be why we'll never be staying in a high-end Disney resort ever again.)(Unless Raytheon wants to pay for it again!) The first night we just rented our car and went to the hotel. We got room service for dinner - we split one entree because I'd packed snacks for the plane, so we weren't starving, but we needed something. We got the cedar plank salmon, and oh. my. god. That was the most delicious salmon I've ever tasted. The fish is grilled right on the plank, infusing it with a surprisingly tasty smokey-woody flavor, plus it was smothered in a miraculous glaze of soy sauce and maple syrup. And the roasted veggies were awesome too.

On Friday, we went to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. It was about an hour's drive from our hotel. James had a ball - it was the highlight of the trip for him. I'd been there once before so while it was cool to see, I wasn't all that excited about it either. But I'm so glad James got to see it, he was so blown away by all the rockets and things.

After getting our fill of space stuff, we drove back to Orlando to hit up Disney World. Our plan was to go to the Magic Kingdom for the evening, to see the night time parade and the fireworks. Unfortunately, when we got to the gate at 5pm, the guy who takes your money for parking told us that there was no charge for parking because the park was closing in two hours. It was grad night, and the park was off-limits to anyone who wasn't a high school senior. Harumph. So rather than only have two hours in the park, we decided to go to Epcot where at least we'd get a full evening. But still: bah humbug. The highlight of our first night in Disney World was dinner at the Moroccan restaurant. We got an appetizer of goat cheese and crispy bread, which turned out to be cracker-like wedges stuck in round balls of goat cheese. There was a yummy roasted red pepper sauce drizzled over top the cheese. Our entree (which we split) was beef couscous, cous cous being the national dish of Morocco. It was delicious! The beef was perfectly cooked, tender and falling apart.

The next day, Saturday, we returned our rental car to the airport, then took the free Disney World shuttle from the airport back to the Contemporary resort to check in. This sounds simple enough and I thought it wouldn't take too long, but it was after noon before we were finally able to go to a park. So we got on the monorail that goes right through the lobby of our hotel, but then we thought we were going the wrong direction so we got off at the transportation center (or whatever it's called) to get an express to the Magic Kingdom, we ended up waiting FOREVER for a train. Something must've been wrong with the trains, because our little turnaround ended up taking an HOUR. What. The HECK. I was pretty annoyed at how late we were getting to the Magic Kingdom, and then when we got there, we found out that it was closing at 7pm AGAIN. Wait a minute, ANOTHER grad night?? Boooooo. Still, we got to enjoy the park for a few hours, we road Space Mountain, we got stuck on the Carousel of Progress, which I thought was going to be the train ride through Tomorrowland, then we took the train through Tomorrowland... I forget what else we did. We left the park around 4:30 because we had reservations at the Italian restaurant in Epcot, so we went over there and had a fabulous dinner. Back at the hotel that night, we watched the fireworks from the hallway in front of our room, in our pjs.

On Sunday we got into the Magic Kingdom fairly early - not right at the opening as I'd hoped, but still early enough to beat most of the crowds. Liberty Square and Adventureland and those areas in the back of the park were pretty vacant, which was nice. We went on Pirates of the Caribbean and Splash Mountain without hardly a wait, and got fastpasses for Big Thunder Mountain. We saw the Hall of Presidents show, which I'd never seen before (somehow on all my previous visits - all two of them - I totally missed the Libery Square area). Between Saturday and Sunday, we hit all the major rides. That evening, our plan was to go back to Epcot for dinner in Mexico, then go back to the Magic Kingdom for the parade and fireworks. Unfortunately, right as we went in to dinner at Mexico, the skies opened up and a nasty thunderstom swept in. We had a nice dinner in Mexico, and walked around a bit in Epcot afterwards despite the weather. It wasn't raining too hard, but the sky was lighting up from time to time with some impressive lighting. We made our way back to the Magic Kingdom only to find that they delayed the parade until after the fireworks, and then announcements kept coming over the loudspeakers that the fireworks were being delayed. It was raining pretty steadily by then and we weren't dressed for it, and the cheerful message about the fireworks being delayed kept coming up, so we decided to just go back to the hotel. The weather wasn't going to change for the better anytime soon, so rather than get soaked and wait in the cold for a long time only to not get the fireworks anyway, we just bailed and went back to the hotel. Of course as soon as we got back to our room, we saw that the fireworks were starting up. We watched from the fire escape this time, and they actually had the music piped in out there, so we got more of the experience. Still, the next night was James' award dinner, so that was our last chance to see the parade and fireworks, so that was a bummer.

The next day, the special extra park hours that Disney grants to the resort guests was at the Animal Kingdom. They were opening that park at 8am, so we decided to go there until 2 or so, then go back to the hotel to get ready for James' dinner. Unfortunately, James realized that the dinner that evening would necessitate a tie and a business coat, which he didn't even own let alone pack one for Florida. He had only packed regular workday-type clothes: khakis and button-down cotton shirts. And the CEO of the company was going to be there. So we had to go on a coat-gettin' adventure. We took the Disney shuttle to Downtown Disney, which is the closest point to the Disney World complex entrance that we could get. There were lots of taxis there, so we grabbed one and went to some outlets that were only maybe a mile away. We went to a Ralph Lauren outlet and found a pompous-looking sport coat that was awfully pricey for an outlet, then we went to a Van Huesen outlet that had more reasonably-priced clothing. We found a nice sport coat on sale, and a tie, and then we decided to get a new shirt because we wanted to be sure the tie would match. Then I told him to get new pants too, to be sure that those would match too. So we got him a whole new outfit, but it ended up being less than the price of that Ralph Lauren coat, so we felt pretty good about that. And he looked FANTASTIC in his new clothes.

Sadly though, by the time we got back to the hotel and got all his new clothes ironed, it was too late to go to Animal Kingdom. Waah. So we went down to the hotel pool and relaxed, swam and even played on the water slide a bit. It was a good time, and very refreshing after our crazy morning! Then James had to go to start his conference, and I hung out in the hotel until it was time to join him for dinner. I got all gussied up in one of my favorite dresses (a strapless white cotton one with brown flowers, which I wore to our engagement party) and joined him for dinner. It was pretty boring and business-y (the guy next to us only wanted to talk business, blah!) but the food was good and it was so exciting to see my sweetie get his award.

The next morning I had to be up early to catch my bus back to the airport. I joined James at his conference breakfast, which was nice! Then he saw me off to my shuttle, which whisked me back to the airport. It was strange to fly without him, but luckily the flight was an easy one!