Thursday, May 10th: a mish-mashy day of vacation-y things
We had been pretty consistently
busy, busy, busy from the time our plane touched down on Friday night…..and we had a much-anticipated day at Discovery Cove planned for our final full day in Orlando…..so we opted to make this Thursday our “free-form” day: not really a
restful one, per se, but nothing really scheduled either. A day to take are of some 'business', do a little relaxing, and still find time to have a little fun. I suppose this would be as
restful as we got on this trip.
We did have one commitment for early in the day: we had decided to take advantage of the Vistana’s customary offer for a complimentary resort photo session and free 5 x 7 print. We did one of the sessions a few years ago one of our first stays at the resort (back when all three of us were travelling together as a family), and got some great shots for a crazy reasonable price. While we weren’t planning on purchasing the CD of our session this time [we had gotten plenty of great pictures at the parks thanks to our Photokey], we thought it might be nice to have one non-park picture to commemorate our silver anniversary. The sessions are pretty quick (about 15 minutes long) so they don’t take up much of the day, and we were able to book one of their first time slots of the morning
.
While our photographer was one of the sweetest young ladies we’ve had the pleasure of meeting in quite a long time, we weren’t super fond of most of the shots she captured
. I will give her this: she was very creative
!! For many of the pictures, she had us leaping in the air while holding hands
(or something equally as awkward) which, looking on the bright side, made picking our favorite shot for the complimentary print quite easy
. There were only a few that didn’t make me cringe!!
This is the one we ended up choosing.
Had we wanted a CD of all the images from our session (which would have been about ….. 20-25?, I would guess) the price would have been $59, and it came with a full release so you could make your prints wherever you wished. A very fair price, I thought. Smaller print packages were also available for those who wished to purchase hard copy photos.
We left the resort photo session and made a stop at Golden Corral for a hearty breakfast before embarking on the balance of our day’s activities. Steve was as hungry as a grizzly bear by then, so a buffet was right up his alley. It was oddly empty in the restaurant when we arrived (perhaps because it was a weekday morning?
) so we were greeted and seated without any kind of wait. Steve made a beeline straight for the bacon…..and the ham…..and the fried chicken
. What happens on vacation, stays on vacation!!
I’m a bit more of a traditionalist. While bacon is an important component of breakfast, so are eggs, pancakes, and hashbrowns. Variety is the spice of life, as they say.
It was a good morning for a Golden Corral breakfast, as we planned to skip lunch in preparation for our much anticipated evening feast: we would be meeting
@chiamarie at Kobe’s Steakhouse and rumor had it that portions were going to be pretty darn huge. We could eat hearty now and ideally not be hungry again until the time that dinner rolled around…..especially if we limited ourselves to just a small snack when we visited Disney Springs later that morning.
After breakfast, we headed to Kissimmee to do a little bit of shopping for “souvenirs” for our boy: he had put in a request for some shoes and clothing from his beloved Nike Clearance Store and we were happy to spoil him a little. After all, you can’t really bring a 22-year-old man home a Shamu stuffie, right? To ensure he was going to like all the stuff we picked out (our “parent” tastes can be much different than his!!) we texted a few photos back and forth to get his thumbs up before purchasing…..it’s not like we could take anything back if it happened not to fit or be the wrong style.
New Lebrons are always, always a hit (not only does Florida offer styles not readily available to him in Canada, but the price we pay at the Clearance Store is WAY less than he would pay from a Canadian retailer):
.....plus we picked him up some new shorts and shirts as well. Summer was coming, after all.
We know him pretty well, though, because he was elated and thrilled with everything we found…..and we got several thank you's and “love ya, momma!” texts as we made our way to the next stop on the souvenir search: the Lake Buena Vista Factory Stores.
Somehow I missed taking any photos here, but probably because it was a pretty quick mission. We popped into a few of the sports stores (Under Armor, Nike, Reebok) but the bargains were few and far between. Now that we live in the USA and have easy access to outlet stores here in Michigan (and a lower tax rate than Florida by a smidge), clothes shopping in Florida isn’t a really big deal for us. Our biggest score was at the Lindt Outlet, where we got a rocking good deal on beautiful Florida themed gift bags full of our own custom assortment of 100 Lindor chocolates. We picked up one for Jake (a little surprise to go along with the shoes and clothes), one for my mom, and one for Steve’s parents. We splurged and picked up a smaller assortment for us to enjoy to ensure that we didn’t suffer from a breakdown in willpower and end up stealing a few from the other bags before they made it back to Michigan
.
We darted back to the villa to unload our packages (we were mostly worried about those chocolates melting in the heat of the rental) and with our to-do list fully completed, we were able to begin the “fun” part of the day: a visit to Disney Springs.
More to come