On The Road with M and B: Florida

From Disney 2008

M here… B’s reading the PassPorter and planning our day at the Animal Kingdom tomorrow. We just had some dinner with my Dad, brothers and my nephew Vinny. Considering the way our day started, I think it ended really well.

How did you start it, you ask? We started it sleeping in the car. That’s right. In the car.

After our 15-hour drive from DC to Orlando (2 extra hours due to holiday weekend traffic and construction), we arrived in Orlando at around 1 am. Excited to check into the hotel and get a good nights’ sleep, we headed over to the “Metropolitan Hotel”, stopping at Walgreens on the way to get some Advil PM for me – I had a headache and hadn’t been sleeping well, so I wanted to be sure to get a good nights’ sleep.

After spending way too much time looking for a parking spot and then checking in, we headed up to room 1304. It was disgusting. Old, musty… the sheets looked like they hadn’t been washed in ages. It was just gross and we left. B said he’d rather sleep in the car than in this place. Funny… that’s exactly what we ended up doing.

We checked several different places (at this point, it’s about 2am and I’ve taken 2 Advil PM), and nobody had any vacancies. We headed over to the place we booked for the remainder of the week to see if they would let us check in a day early. Nobody at the front desk till 7am. So yup… we slept in the car. Till 7am. Well, I did. There was no way B was falling asleep. He was on the lookout for bad guys.

From Disney 2008

Luckily, we were able to check into the other place at 7am, and proceeded to sleep for the next 6 hours.

We decided to head over to Downtown Disney and spent the afternoon there. I hadn’t been there in years, and so much has changed. As I was looking around, I was thinking about how much fun Vinny’s going to have at the Magic Kingdom on Friday. We had lunch at Wolfgang Puck’s Café, where a woman fell on me as B and I were talking about how happy we were to finally be here. Like… on me. Turns out she tripped over a broom. It was pretty bad – I mean, you could see the bruise growing bigger before your eyes. I hope they got their lunch for free.

From Disney 2008

We spent some time in the World of Disney store, where B found a cool (organic cotton ;-)) t-shirt. I like that Downtown Disney isn’t just filled with stores selling cheap trinkets (though there are plenty of those too), but it actually offers some cool art – blown glass, paintings, etc.

Claudia told me that we had to go to the Ghirardelli Soda Shop for a milkshake while we were there, so of course we did. I got a dark chocolate mint Quake Shake and B went with the chocolate peanut butter. Both delicious – mine was better.

Once Upon a Toy was really cool, and they had a spot where you could make your own Light Saber. Guess who made his own Light Saber?

From Disney 2008

We of course spent time trying on all the hats, because that’s what we do. We like hats.

From Disney 2008

My brother Eric flew in from Iraq tonight, so after my father and other brother Nick and my nephew Vinny picked him up and met us for a bite to eat (Tu Tu Tango was the restaurant – if you’re in Orlando, check it out). It was so great to see them all. Everyone seemed really happy and we had a lot of fun. B met Dad for the first time :)