3 posts tagged “valentine's day”
Ok, I've started this a little late, but better late than never, right?
Sunday morning, we woke up fairly early and got ready to check out of the hotel. We were on our way to Animal Kingdom around 9:45. From the (extremely crowded) front gate, we walked straight back to Africa and bought some cinnamon buns. As the masses rushed toward Everest and Kilamenjaro Safari, we sat in the shade of the open-air Dawa Bar and enjoyed the beautiful 70 degree weather while eating our breakfast. It was really nice!
From there, we headed back toward the Festival of the Lion King, which neither of us had seen. Tadd tried to get some pics of the show, but our camera sucks, and the lighting level was quite low. It was a cute show. The theme of the day was to do as many things as we could that we either had never done, or hadn't done in a very, very long time (with the exception of Everest, because I absolutely cannot leave AK without riding Everest!).
We took the train back from the Planet Watch area and then went on the Maharaja Jungle Trek in Asia. Not sure why, but this is something we had always passed up every other time we had been to AK. I'm so glad we finally decided to do it! They did such an amazing job with this animal trail. It winds all around and through this beautiful area that is made to look like the ruins of an ancient Buddhist temple. The architecture, the painted murals on the walls of the temple, and the incredible attention to detail were just breathtaking! To see tigers and various other exotic animals in those types of surroundings was really wonderful.
After we left the trail, we had lunch at the counter service portion of the new Yak & Yeti restaurant. The food was pretty good, but I must say I'm not a fan of the setup. The tables are all behind the restaurant in a crowded open-air courtyard with very little shielding of the elements. We were there during one of Disney's slow periods, and there were tons of people milling about with trays stacked with food, looking around for tables. I was lucky that I grabbed a table as a family was leaving while Tadd waited in line to order, but due to the table's positioning, we had to sit to one side of the table to avoid the direct path of the sun. I just can't imagine eating there when it's 90 degrees out and 10 times more crowded! And what happens when it rains??? We all know that happens quite a bit in Florida, especially during the summer. I told Tadd that next time we're going to pay the extra few dollars and eat in the sit-down restaurant, which is all inside. I've heard nothing but great things about it.
We really only had one more thing on our list...Everest. We made it all the way over to the foot of the mountain when Tadd realized he didn't have his backpack on him! So we RAN back to Yak & Yeti to look for it. Luckily, the nice family in the table next to ours noticed we had left it behind, and had turned it in to the nearby gift stand. Crisis averted! So we then walked all the way back to Everest. With how crowded the park was, we were shocked to see the wait was still only 30 minutes. Not bad! But then I saw the sign for the single riders line. I figured it didn't really matter to me if I didn't ride with Tadd, so we decided to chance it. There were only maybe 7 people in line ahead of us, and we probably only waited 10 minutes or so. Better yet, the back row was completely empty, so the guy assigning the single riders to fill in the gaps just let us have the back row. So we even got to sit together! Score! After Everest, we headed out of the park and went back home. My feet were killing me by the time we got back to the car. There's something about Animal Kingdom that is very draining. We always spend way less time in a day at AK than at other parks, but I always leave feeling completely exhausted. But then I can be at Epcot for 12 hours straight and still feel ok at the end of the day. I think it must be the layout of the park or something.
Thus ends our wonderful Valentine's weekend!
We had a wonderful weekend, as expected. I was hoping it wouldn't end, but of course, it did. We left around 11am Saturday morning, and headed for Downtown Disney. We wanted to start our day early, but didn't necessarily want to check into our hotel just yet, so we figured that was the best place to go to kill some time. We wandered around a bit, and decided to have lunch at Portobello Yacht Club. Neither of us had ever been there before, so we figured why not. I must say that we will be going back! We were seated on the back porch, overlooking the Pleasure Island Lagoon, which was great because the weather was spectacular...mid 70s and sunny. And the food was really good. They have these mini bread loaves that they bring out with butter and a whole roasted head of garlic that has been sliced across the top. The garlic is so soft that you can take your butter knife, scoop out some garlic, and spread it onto your bread like butter. YUM! They also give 20% discounts for Disney Passholders, so our lunch cost about what a meal would normally cost for us at a place like Panera. Not bad at all.
Eventually we drove to our hotel, which is only about 2 minutes off of Disney property, and checked in. I was happy that our room was ready because the first time we stayed there, our room wasn't ready until 4:30. They gave us a room in the St. Augustine section of the hotel, which I really liked. The furnishings had a Spanish-Colonial/gothic/explorer theme, which really appealed to both of us. There was this big square stone filigreed art piece hanging over the desk that I wanted to take home with me. Anyways, we had more time to kill, so we walked around the huge atrium of the hotel, explored a bit, took some pictures, and just enjoyed pretending like we were on a vacation. Eventually, we made our way back to our room and started getting ready for our big night out.
We wanted to get to the Contemporary Resort pretty early because we knew it was important to have a really good table in a restaurant like the California Grill. It turned out we were the first people to check in that night! We went up in the elevator to the 15th floor and found that we had the restaurant to ourselves! And the view was actually more spectacular than I had imagined. We still had about 30 minutes to wait until we would be seated, so we sat at a window-side table in the lounge to just take in the view for a few minutes. A waiter talked us into some pre-dinner drinks that were a little pricier than I had imagined, but we really didn't care much because we were having such a great time. I ordered a glass of riesling and Tadd got some sake. Pretty soon, other people started filing into the lounge, and then our buzzer went off. Our table had just as good a view as the table we sat at in the lounge. The sun was setting and the yellow/orange light flooding into the restaurant gave everything a glowy look. It was really romantic. Definitely the most romantic dinner Tadd and I have ever shared.
And the food was amazing! We started with mushroom flatbread with truffle-infused fingerling chips, which, in my opinion, was the best part of the meal. Tadd had the grilled pork loin with goat cheese polenta, sage, and a zinfandel reduction. I had the butternut squash ravioli with oyster mushrooms in a balsamic vinaigrette. Then we shared the valhrona molten chocolate cake with house-made blood orange ice cream.
After our spectacular dinner, I changed into the more comfy shoes I had brought with me, and we drove over to the Boardwalk Resort, parked, and walked over to the back World Showcase entrance of Epcot. It was about 7:30 by that time, so we had about 90 minutes to hang around until Illuminations started at 9. We wandered over to France, where I had to buy one of their Grey Goose Cintron slushes, then we walked back across the bridge to find a place to watch the fireworks near the UK or Canada. We decided to explore the Canada pavilion a little more than we usually do, since it's one of those pavilions that we usually pass right by. Tadd really liked the moose hat he found in one of the stores. We realized that although World Showcase was pretty crowded that night, the upper parts of the Canada pavilion were almost deserted, which was great because that area has some of the best viewing spots for Illuminations. So we just decided to stay where we were for the show. Then we took our time walking back to our car, stopped by Publix for a bottle of wine, and headed back to our hotel room, just in time to see Barack Obama's victory speech on MSNBC!
And there I will stop for now, since I have posted a lot of pictures. More later.
This weekend will be nice. We are celebrating Valentines Day a little early. Back in October, Tadd got reservations for the California Grill (at the very top of the Contemporary Resort, overlooking Magic Kingdom) for tomorrow night. He timed the reservations with the fireworks, and we're going to arrive early to try to get window seats. To make a weekend out of it, I went on Priceline and got an inexpensive hotel reservation at Gaylord Palms Resort, which is incidentally the same resort where we spent our first anniversary. I'm not sure what the plan is aside from dinner, but I think we may end up at Animal Kingdom on Sunday. We're also thinking about going to one of the parks after dinner...possibly Epcot, or maybe Downtown Disney if we get out of the restaurant too late to go to the parks. Should be fun.
We are not only celebrating Valentine's Day, but also the 5 year anniversary of Tadd proposing to me, and the fact that we both have new jobs.
Gotta get back to work. More later.
