Downtown Disney, Orlando, Florida – 1/4/2015
JANUARY 4, 2015 (Sunday)
Didn’t sleep all that well last night, but I did manage to sleep in this morning. Michael got up about an hour before me and watched his CBS Sunday Morning show that he loves. We lazed around and tried to figure out what we wanted to do and finally decided to go to Downtown Disney.
We left around 1:30 PM but were hungry so we went to a nearby Panera Bread and had lunch. Michael got a turkey sandwich and a bowl of broccoli/cheese soup. I got a asiago steak sandwich and a cobb salad. Everything was pretty good (as usual for Panera).
We got to Downtown Disney around 2:30 PM (free parking) and walked and walked and walked. Was pretty busy for a Sunday afternoon, I thought. Much of the area is under construction, so that part was disappointing.
We stopped at the AMC movie theater to see if there was something we wanted to see. “Unbroken” and “Into the Woods” were playing, but not for awhile, so we decided to keep on trucking. We thought about having a drink at the House of Blues (for Jan and Caron, our Canadian friends who love jazz and blues), but kept on walking, we were still full. We went over the bridge and saw some really interesting things, mostly for kids. There was one place called T-Rex. Looked like a restaurant, but not sure. They had a Lego store, a really cute kiosk for dog lovers, a leather belt place, and just a bunch of things for shopping and knick knacks. We read they have the world’s largest Disney Store as well. There was also a volcano spouting fire that would go off every once in awhile. I even got wet when I walked under a statue of Stitch, who then spit out water on people below. Lots and lots of places to eat and shop. Still grateful we have a Prius and can’t be buying a lot of “stuff.”
After a couple of hours we were done and tired. We asked a really nice employee at the dog kiosk about how to take the water taxi. (We didn’t want to walk all the way back. We’re getting lazy.) He said it was free and gave us great directions on how to get to it and which line to stand in. He was right on. We got to the pickup area and only had to wait about five minutes before our taxi arrived. While we were waiting we got to see a very large flock of white Ibis birds just chilling. We were lucky in that we were the last ones to get on the water taxi for this trip. We had a great old captain, Claude, piloting the boat. It was fun and went at a pretty good pace to near our parking lot.
We left Downtown Disney and headed for the Publix near our “home.” We picked up a few things.
We are now home and awaiting our date night watching “Downton Abbey” (season premiere). That was our day. Hope yours was great!