Can starting a day with glorious sunshine, a beautiful temperature and not a cloud in the sky, overlooking a lake, ever get boring? The air feels crisp and clean.
Yet, for the first time, I was starting to feel almost ready to go home. We have been away for almost three weeks now and I am beginning to miss home and all that goes with it. It does confirm our previous thoughts that about three weeks away is probably the optimum time for us. Knowing that is already bringing me some anxiety about our first trip next year, which is for four weeks. Not that I am trying to wish the rest of this trip away, especially as some of the highlights are still to come, and I know I will love the next trip once I am there.
It was a slightly later start for both Karen and Neil this morning, and I had a good hour and a half on my own by the pool before they joined me.
In between finally reading this trip’s blogs and grudgingly giving them her approval, Karen busied herself sorting out the washing to dry in the sunshine. Neil lay watching and listening to football on his phone.
We had a very early lunch. I heated up my first Clam Chowder of the trip. It was just fine but lacked something. After we had all eaten, we got ourselves ready and eventually were in the car, ready to leave just before 1pm.
Our first stop was to be the Tibet-Butler Nature Preserve, which was on our side of Winter Garden. The route we took was past some lovely big new housing estates we had never seen before, and then suddenly we found ourselves right behind Magic Kingdom, with a great view of the back of the castle as we passed the cast car park. That was interesting in itself.
The Nature Preserve promised some nice walking trails and lots of possible wildlife sightings. It was just a shame that, when we arrived, we found numerous signs saying that all the trails were closed due to heavy flooding. In the couple of days of rain Florida had experienced a week ago, more rain had fallen than London has had all year, so perhaps it was not surprising. It was still disappointing, though.
We wandered around the free information centre, learning about all the things we could have seen. We agreed we would try to visit again on another trip.
We drove on to the historic part of Winter Garden, a place we had enjoyed visiting once before. It is a lovely place for a wander and was already gearing itself up for Christmas, when it becomes one of the most visited places in Florida. Most of the bars and restaurants were full, both inside and out, with families simply enjoying the weather and the Sunday afternoon vibe.
The only thing it lacked was some interesting shops to browse, or at least some that were open. The only ones open seemed to be selling ‘tat’.
There was, though, an ice cream shop called ‘Scoops’ that was serving through a hole in the wall. We remembered it being busy last time we were here but decided this time to join the queue to see what all the fuss was about.
They sold Hershey’s ice cream and had about 20 different flavours on offer. I purchased three, for less than the price we had paid for one scoop at Ghirardelli in Disney Springs. Karen and I had the Dark Chocolate Raspberry Whirl, whilst Neil went for one called ‘Superman’, which was a mixture of colours and flavours. They were all delicious and I was most proud that I managed to eat mine without dripping a single drop down myself, although my hands did get rather messy.
The reason my hands got messy was that this coincided with the exact time the tickets for the Soul Church back home in Norwich were released for their free Christmas Show. We have been along for the last couple of years and really enjoyed it.
I refreshed my phone as I was paying for the ice creams at the exact second they were released and found myself at number 2,500 in the queue. The number started to go down and then kept jumping up until I was number 3,500. After 20 minutes of waiting and trying to eat my ice cream at the same time, I finally got in and found that, unsurprisingly, all the tickets had sold out.
Disappointing, but not the end of the world. There is always next year!
We walked to the Crooked Can Brewery, which was packed with people sitting outside drinking the beers brewed inside the building and enjoying food from the food stalls inside. We were lucky to find a table. Karen and Neil had a jar of Florida Sunshine Ale whilst I had a bottle of water. It was all rather lovely.
As it was a large table we had nabbed, an American family asked if they could join us. Eventually, as ever, their curiosity got the better of them and they asked the usual question of where we were from.
They were from ‘The Villages’, the world’s largest purpose-built active retirement community, with 150,000 retirees, over 40 full golf courses and 2,500 clubs to join. It did sound idyllic. Neil later described it as a Trump conclave, but I’m not sure of the truth behind all that claim or its relevance.
From here, we drove to the large Lake Apopka, which Winter Garden sits alongside. It was again rather lovely as the sun started its journey down towards sunset. We watched a few different types of birds and spotted a large turtle, but no wild gators.
Then we started the quick journey back to Kissimmee, where, after a dash into Dollar Tree to get some bin bags, we went to Cheddar’s for dinner. Karen had the Chicken Pot Pie, whilst Neil and I both went for the half rack of ribs. All the meals got the big thumbs up.
Back in the villa, Karen watched both of this weekend’s ‘Strictly’ programmes, whilst Neil and I read and caught up with things online.
And that was another day in this sunny, lovely part of the world.
