Hopefully, I’ll soon start waking up at a normal time rather than the 5 a.m. by which I was wide awake today. I decided to continue an online chat I’d been having with the Sky complaints department from yesterday. I considered it a moral victory when they agreed to waive my usual monthly fee and sort out the Wi-Fi dropout areas in our house — the ones they caused when their last engineer moved the router.
Anyway, it was another lovely morning. Karen and I had decided to go food shopping early, so we didn’t miss the best part of the day. We were in Dollar Tree by 8:50 a.m. and on our way back from Publix by 9:30, which we were quite pleased with.
We spent a glorious few hours lounging by the pool. I read a John Grisham novel that had been left in the villa and couldn’t remember ever having read before. It was all rather lovely. Karen watched the Strictly results show by the pool.
An early lunch was planned and eaten, and just after 12:30 p.m. we were all in the car heading out to our first stop — Gideon’s Bakehouse, about 45 minutes away, north of Orlando and just below Winter Park.
Pleasingly, there was no queue, and we had a good chat with the lady serving in their small store inside a little market building. We were delighted to learn that their cookies freeze well, so we bought an extra one to try and take home for Barry and Ellie. They even gave us a zip-lock bag so we could put it in the villa’s freezer and bring it home safely.
After this, we drove to Winter Park and parked near the boat dock to get tickets for a lake cruise. Fortunately, there was space on the 2 p.m. trip — just ten minutes away. The cost was $20 each, which seems to be the going rate for this kind of attraction.
The boat tours have been running continuously since 1938 — long before most of the houses around the lakes were built. We’ve done it a couple of times before, and it always makes for a pleasant, relaxing trip. Our “captain” and guide today was Don, a cool, once-retired guy who clearly needed a bit of extra income — as, like many Americans, he seemed to have little or no pension provision.
Some of the houses around the lake are worth $40 million or more, and they were amazing. One of the smaller ones was lived in by Mr Rogers of Have a Good Day fame while he attended Rollins College, which borders the lake.
Don was engaging company, and the hour-long trip soon passed. I’m not sure what his connection was with the Morse Museum in Winter Park, but if he mentioned that it houses the largest collection of Tiffany glass in the world once, he did so a dozen times.
At the end, Neil grudgingly admitted that he’d enjoyed the trip — albeit without exactly enthusing about it.
I moved the car to the nearby train station before we went for a walk along Main Street. It’s still full of quaint little shops, most of which we limited ourselves to window-shopping.
Our first stop was outside Starbucks, where we found a table and bought some drinks. Nearly all the other tables were occupied by people “working from home” — including a couple clearly on Teams calls. It seemed rather strange (and not very private). I briefly considered standing behind them and waving to their co-workers but thought better of it.
We carried on with a short stroll and went into the famous taffy shop. We contemplated buying Barry some of the more “interesting” flavours — like Pickle — but decided that we’d done that once before and left empty-handed.
The drive back to the villa was not good. Traffic on the I-4 was horrendous and added another 30 minutes to the journey. The problem seemed to be nothing more than sheer volume.
We had about an hour at the villa before setting out again for dinner. Our route took us past Target, and as we hadn’t been into one this trip, we stopped for a 20-minute wander. Karen went in primarily to buy some socks but forgot to look for them and came out with a new swimming costume instead — as you do.
After filling up with petrol, we drove on to Sickies restaurant for dinner. Neil and I both had burgers, while Karen went for chicken. We all cleared our plates and enjoyed the food.
As we came out of the restaurant, I was intrigued by a cannabis vending van parked by the roadside nearby — especially as I wasn’t even sure it was legal in Florida. I fancied trying some of the gummies they were advertising, but Neil warned against it, muttering that it might invalidate our travel insurance. I suspect he just didn’t want to be present when his parents tried them for the first time. So, we simply drove past.
Back at the villa, Karen watched more Shark Tank, while Neil and I tucked into our Gideon’s Bakehouse cookies. They were really good — probably worth all the hype, though I still wouldn’t queue for an hour at Disney Springs (their only other outlet) to get one. I decided it was the sprinkling of rock salt on top of the chocolate chip that really made it zing.
After a short while, we all continued the trend of this trip — retiring early, this time in anticipation of a big day tomorrow: our first visit to Epic Universe.
