Sunday, June 10, 2012

ORLANDO for winter. pt 9: the tomato soup tragedy

--> Previously: By 9 pm-ish, we caught a taxi back home. A nice Egyptian guy happened to be the driver and we had a good, warm talk along the way back to the hotel. We pretty much didn't do much when we got to the hotel. Elda had to pack and the rest of the night we spent by watching random stuff (like cartoons) to Walt Disney World private channel on TV.
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- DAY 5: DECEMBER 22, 2011 -

With Animal Kingdom concluding our theme park visit euphoria, and Elda leaving early in the morning, Aymee, Ardy, and I basically had nothing much to do for today. We woke up very late the day after Animal Kingdom, around 11 am-ish. By the time we did, Elda already went poof-ed. She must have been en route back to San Jose.

I – particularly – woke up with some back pains and extreme exhaustion. Ardy, Aymee, and I were even awake for less than an hour before we fell back to bed and resumed sleeping until around 2pm.

We didn't have any special plans that day. At first, we were thinking to go to Disney Downtown for a stroll, but seeing it took a specific scheduled shuttle to get there, we cancelled the plan (duh, we totally missed the scheduled shuttle).

At 2, we went downstairs to Savannah Grill to have late lunch. The restaurant was soooooo empty! Well, no wonder, since at this time of the day, all guests must be at an Orlando theme park. We were the only ones stuck at the hotel, not knowing what else to do, suffering out of back pains and aches due to walking and screaming for the past 4 days subsequently.

At the restaurant, we helped ourselves with whatever was available. Aymee and Ardy munched on what I remember sandwiches or burgers, and I helped myself with a tomato soup, cos I felt like eating something liquid-ish and warm.

This isn't the picture I took, but the soup looked like this
http://simplerecipe.net
However, there was a bit problem...well, actually it was quite big. When I was about to garnish some peppers on the soup, the loose lid of the pepper shaker went off, and in the end, I had a huge pile of black pepper on the surface of my soup. When I tried to brush some of the pepper off the soup, I accidentally mixed them altogether in the soup, making the pepper impossible to be removed. Eating it seemed impossible, and I only cringed everytime I had a spoonful of the pepper-ful soup. So Aymee suggested that I shared the soup with her (she also ordered the same thing, but still completely in a good condition).

Anyway, dun dun dun, we did pretty much nothing for the rest of the day. We did take some time watching TV, strolling around the hotel, and looking up for some more restaurant coupons for some cheap deals. We were cheapskate students/tourists lol. After a while, we found out that a nearby restaurant, Golden Corral, offered a decent deal only for that day, where we got $40 for all you can eat! And that's for three of us! So each of us would need to pay roughly $13 for all-you-can-eat type of meals!

Around 7, we walked to Golden Corral, which was located around a block away (remember the street full of restaurants along the way I told you on the first day we got to Orlando?). The line was sooooo long, and most visitors are families. It was a quite crowded restaurant with some stations serving different kinds of food (from Mexican to Salad station). But we managed to dug our way in soon after showing the cashier our discount coupon.
The next hour, don't even bother to ask what happened. We crazily dug into the food. I took rounds and rounds of eating, grabbing as much as possible, from salad, soup, some beef and chicken, spaghetti, and lastly desert (I'm sure I took more than that). Well, I wouldn't to waste $13 for a small amount of everyday meal. By the time I wanted to munch on the last course which is, of course, dessert, my stomach felt like a giant rock. I could barely move lol.

After a while of letting the food sliding down the throat to being digested, Aymee, Ardy, and I were about to take off from the restaurant before realizing that there was a connection door to an adjacent gift store. We went there and looked around for a bit, where I spotted this...

ORLANDO FRIGGIN LOVES ME

Ah well, I ended up not buying it since it was actually a real license plate. The size was unreasonably big to be brought for travel, so I wasn't sure if it was going to fit my bag.

As for the stuff we bought there, I ended up buying two key chains for my friends for a good deal. Even though the quality of the items sold in the gift stores along the road were doubtable compared to the official shops inside the Disney parks, the price isn't kidding. One keychain only reached up to $2 max. Disney parks official keychains can sell up to $6. Speaking of the huge price gap here.

Anyway, from this gift store, we walked our way back home while listening to some faint explosions from the distance following with sparks of faint light. Apparently Magic Kingdom fireworks were on. Oh how I had missed the place even though I just went there like three days before.

We dropped by at 7/11 to buy some snacks and drinks before our flight to New York the next day. I bought myself a cold orange juice that I'd been longing. While waiting for Aymee and Ardy to pick their items, I browsed through the magazine stall before noticing that across the stall itself was a counter to buy the tickets to Disney Parks...at A MUCH LOWER RATE! WTF is this??!! We compared the price of the tickets we bought online to the one sold in this counter. Well, it wasn't that much of the difference, but still...that just hurt me, and that hurt even more when a family of four came to the counter and purchased the tickets T_T

You know what they say, it's no use to cry over a poured milk.

When we were almost back at the hotel, Aymee suddenly decided to drop by at another gift store located exactly outside the parking lot of the hotel (I forgot if I'd mention this before but this gift store was considerably huge with a huge colorful mermaid carving on its walls). The prices of the keychains in the store were even ridiculously much cheaper than the previous store, so I thought of buying some, and this time...more than two.

It was already 11ish pm. The store was quiet as heck and we were like the only customers left. Aymee still had fun digging up some stuff and apparently she determined to find a present for her cousin Nancy, whose birthday would be at the coming weeks. I first thought that Aymee was going to give Nancy something Disney-ish but she ended up buying a miniature of a gold guitar (because Nancy plays that insturment). Well, the miniature wasn't the only items she bought, as when I looked to her shopping basket, she turned out to buy more stuff for her friends and family. How generous of her :)

Seeing it was late and we had a morning flight to catch up tomorrow, without further ado, we went straight back to the hotel and packed. We squeezed all the souvenirs and stuff we bought during our fulfilling days in the Disney parks and Seaworld into our bags. Thank goodness, the common problem usually found while packing to leave – which is overloaded content – didn't occur this time. All things fit perfectly inside the bags!

Okay time to get some sleep. New York awaits tomorrow! :)
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