Another beautiful day greeted us as the weather seemed to have moved on from its tricky patch. It was all getting rather repetitive, but in a good way. It was also good to have the positive Neil back with us.
I finished reading another book whilst Karen pottered around. She also spent some time going through the plans for our next trip. We finally managed to make her much-needed appointment with the Foot Biomechanics Department at the hospital back home, as we are getting concerned that her foot is turning over far too much again when she walks. We think that, following the back operation and then the hip replacement, she is now walking differently – or waddling as I call it, and her orthotics need redoing.
Sitting by the pool, though, was blissful and the time soon passed by. Another early lunch was taken and the plan was to leave at noon.
We were slightly late but on the road by 12.10pm, heading up International Drive to Gator Golf, where I had purchased a Groupon for the three of us to play. This was for less tha $20 for all of us whereas the Disney Mini Golf is more than $20 each.
This was a course we had played before and enjoyed. It was well maintained, deserted and, as the name suggested, had dozens of gators of all sizes in and around every hole. There were also some giant tortoises who wandered over to us in the hope that we may have brought food.
I started well, taking only two shots on each of the first four holes. Then Neil got a hole in one whilst I took a four, and from that point onwards I was behind him for the rest of the game. Karen played well but never really troubled the leaders.
We were glad that much of the course was in the shade because the sun was flipping hot as we made our way around some of the rather inventive holes. Afterwards, we drove to the nearby ICON Park and eventually found the entrance to the car park.
ICON Park is another place, rather like Sunset Walk, which is well built, clean and well maintained but just seems to be lacking something. It could perhaps do with some shops to browse, as although it has more attractions, there just doesn’t seem to be quite enough there. It might have been better if the two had been merged and built together.
I was also disappointed that, although I hadn’t needed to return my ‘stick’ this year, the stall had disappeared or was simply not there today. I would probably have been sorely tempted to buy another one.
Instead, we headed to Shake Shack, where we all had a Frozen Custard, which was just as good as we remembered. Karen was disappointed that the Starbucks opposite seemed to have closed down. She may have moaned about that for a bit, but my inbuilt Karen ‘moan filter’ may have been operating on high, so I blanked out the full effect.
With that, we headed back to the villa for a couple of hours sitting outside as the sun gradually went down for the day.
For dinner tonight, I had made a reservation at Saltgrass so that we could use our Landry’s Cards, on which we all had free $25 birthday rewards to spend. It may have been purely coincidental, or perhaps a work of fiction, that we had recorded our birthdays as all falling in November – the month we are here.
Funnily enough, the steaks we all ordered were $25 each, so we splashed out and all had a salad with them. Neil even had a Coke Zero. In order to use the rewards, we all had to have separate checks, which confused the server and the manager for a while. The three bills were pleasingly very small when they finally arrived. The food was all very good and we all gave it the big thumbs up.
From here, we drove all the way through Disney and out the other side to Clermont and the Walmart just off the 127. We had a quick 20-minute whizz around before heading to the Publix almost next door.
More ‘soda’, beer, milk and other essentials were purchased before we headed back. Karen was a little weary about unloading the car, as I had seen online that a similar estate just over a mile away had been visited by a rather large bear at night, which had been filmed looking through bins just 24 hours earlier. We didn’t see a bear, but instead just saw rabbits hopping around on the front lawn. At least we managed to get the hopping in without being mauled alive.
We had a cuppa whilst watching the news, which Karen insisted was provided by the BBC, despite it once again being five hours out of date. Bed started calling.
I was already half asleep when I could hear Karen and Neil having a rather loud discussion about the air con, which seemed to have stopped working. I was waiting to be called upon to investigate, but nobody came looking for me, so I happily went back to sleep for the night.
But finally some readers will know that Karen has started going to a choir with Ellie back at home. She will be making her performance debut with them at the Norwich Christmas Lights switch on taking place on Thursday 19th November. So if you would like to hear them perform the Darkness & Elton John Christmas songs – then be there. I’m afraid exact timing and location is a bit sketchy at the moment but thats no excuse!
