Vacations are far and few between. I took them for granted as a child, and spent far more time playing video games during my time off than anything else. Now that I’m all done with the schoolin’ and out in the workforce, this vacation time is even more precious. At the end of May, Andrea and I finally went on our first vacation: the Honeymoon. Thanks goes to Andrea’s mom, who loaned us her camera. I’ve been debating buying a nice DSLR for a while, but just haven’t been able to justify the price tag on one to myself. Cathy’s wasn’t a DSLR either, but it was something. Between Andrea and I, we ended up taking 601 photos, and several videos as well. To the right, is a mosiac I made out of the photos we took using a combination of Houdini and Photoshop. As you may be able to tell from my silhouette, the vacation destination was Orlando.
Tuesday, the 19th
May saw some drought and wild fires in Florida, but we arrived just in time for the rain. We ended up getting some thunder and lighting and rain every day that we were there. So when we arrived on the 19th, it quickly became apparent that we (well… I) would need an umbrella. The image to the upper left is while we were making up our minds as to whether we would get out and eat some food, or wait for the rain to die down. We ended up getting some food from The Magic Wok, and then getting some groceries.
We had booked reservations at The Marriott months ago. Andrea has this shirt she made that says “bride” on the front. She wore it when we showed up, and they “upgraded” our room for free. The layout of the room was pretty sweet (the bottom left is the living room where we were staying), but there were a few problems. The remote to the upstairs tv didn’t work (not a problem since we didn’t want to use the tv), there was no modem for the interweb, there was so much static in the upstairs phone that it was unusable, and there were unwashed dishes in the cupboard. This was perhaps made up for by the free breakfast buffet, and the rockin layout that had a kitchenette (allowing us to make some meals), a/c, multiple bathrooms, and an ice maker… but the one thing that will keep me from going to a Marriott resort again is the fact that there was no recycling.
Wednesday, the 20th
Part of the plan of the honeymoon was that we didn’t really have a plan. Wednesday was a sort of free day, in which we decided to get acquainted with Orlando a little and try to figure out some things to do. We had some tickets to visit Disney World throughout the week, however we were hoping to be able to do some other things like a trip to the beach and perhaps some fishing. After taking a look at the weather forecast for the rest of the week it became painfully obvious that an umbrella would be manditory, and so the first stop that we made on Wednesday was the Florida Mall. I’m not big on malls, or shopping personally… I’d never heard of Saks Fifth Avenue. I’ve been told I don’t get out enough. At any rate, I bought (rather than scavenging from the side of the road) my very first umbrella at this store and since we were there, we decided to tour around the rest of the mall. Some of the stops we made include such landmarks as Brookestone for some maps, M&M World (pictured to the right) for some mascot photo-ops, Dylan’s Candy Bar for some drooling (hey, I actually managed to go without buying anything!), Ritz Camera for some batteries, and Teavana for some fancy tea.
After leaving the mall, we continued on up Orange Blossom, and made our way to the Church Street area of downtown Orlando. We were under the impression that there were lots of great restaurants there and had spent enough time at the mall that it was time for dinner. Unfortunately, it seemed as though we had missed business hours, as it was around 6pm and the only people around, all seemed to be leaving. And so we returned to the hotel and made ourselves some vegan Mac and Cheese that we had picked up at Whole Foods for dinner before settling in for the night. Whole foods was actually a pretty amazing grocery store; I wish we had one in Toronto. The staff there was exceptionally friendly, and we were able to try lots of tasty samples and find many new things to try.
Thursday, the 21st
We were pleasantly surprised to see that while we had intended on buying three day passes to the Disney Parks, that we had actually ended up getting five days for the same price due to a promotion that had been going on at DWTickets.com when we had purchased them. We decided to make our way to Epcot Center the first day. For those who are perhaps unaware of the theme park, I’m actually in the habit of calling it Epcot Center, but it is actually simply: Epcot. The park is dedicated to international culture and technological innovation and was named EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) Center until 1994. Now, not being familiar with the roads, it took us a bit of navigating before we finally got there using some back roads rather than the interstate; only to realize that we’d left the tickets back at the hotel! So we made the circuit to the hotel and back and found ourselves in the theme park pretty much at lunch time. Our first order of business was to locate some anti-rain gear, with a close second being to
fill our stomachs with happiness.
The way Epcot works, is that there are several sections (pavilions) that are scattered around the horseshoe layout of the park. Each pavilion is home to a small village which is supposed to be representational of the culture it is to represent. We wanted to eat at the Japan pavilion, but since that was almost on the opposite side of the park, there was no way that we were about to walk straight to it and completely ignore everything else. I can safely say that we only ignored Canada. We went to the UK pavilion however and were side tracked with their phone booths, and tea cups. As you can see, the tea cups were quite large. Each cup actually had a tea plant growing in it. We then made our way on to the next pavillion: France. Here they had a crazy perfume garden where they had the plants growing which were used to help scent the perfume that they sold nearby. We made our way through the shops, and in a small corridor that connected two of the shops I snagged the photo you see above of the stained glass. After that, we made a brief stop in at the Moroccan pavilion before our stomachs got the best of us and we had to get some eating done.
The Japan pavilion was definitely our favorite spot in all of Epcot, and has pretty much made the decision for us that the next vacation we take will be to Japan. We made our way to Teppan Edo as it’s a communal restaurant where the chef prepares your food before your eyes. It seemed like not only would the food be tasty, but it would be an experience to remember as well. We weren’t wrong. After our orders were taken, the waitress began strapping our table mates’ chopsticks together with elastic bands (Andrea and I did not have this done. Note that even like this, these patrons eventually gave up and used forks; I was in awe. When the Chef arrived, he began with some knife tricks, and made a show of the whole process of cooking our food, which by the way: was very very good.
In Japan,we ate at Teppan Edo: Where the Chef prepares your food before your eyes.
After dining, we made our way out of the restaurant and began to take a more leisurely pace around the pavilion. At ground level, was a candy making show where Miyuki, a candy sculptor, made animals out of rice dough. It was very cool to watch. We then made our way into the Mitsukoshi Department Store, where we spent a lot of time looking at the various wares. You can see a bin of cat charms for sale in the image. Each color represents a different aspect that the cat is supposed to influence. We also both tried on kimonos. Personally I was more interested in the ninja boots. When we finished up in the store, we went into a Japanese Robot exhibit that was next door. There was a video of John Lasseter explaining about how these tin toys were the inspiration for Pixar’s Tin Toy short which in turn was the inspiration for Toy Story. As you can see, Andrea now wants to be a robot.
With that, we were on our way again. We probably spent even less time in the American pavilion than the Canadian one. The ability to buy turkey legs was just not pulling us in. I would have been more satisfied with a miniature New York or Chicago… or like… a dude ranch or something. We continued on our way to the Italian pavilion, which looked stunning. Then, on the way though the German pavilion, there were all sorts of miniature buildings which have been ransacked by geckos and rabbits. Next on the menu was the “Outpost” pavilion, which considering the African nature of it I’m willing to bet this outputs was located in Africa. It’s good to know that Africa is really just dumping grounds for Coca-Cola’s litter.
China was also a very rad zone of Epcot. We made our way there after leaving the “outpost” and were enthralled almost as much as we were at Japan. I really like the eastern style of architecture and art, so it was easy to spend time wandering about. We watched an actobatic show, and then paused to look at the model Terracotta Army and Foo Dog statutes before heading into the shop here. The one thing that I’m now aware of, which I really wasn’t before heading to Epcot, is that it’s really just one massive shopping mall. Oddly enough, with the variety of things to find, it really is still a fun experience despite my lack of enthusiasm for spending money. I was also pretty impressed just with how things were laid out in the store. There was a really nice jacket in the China store that I thought would look great on Andrea. After I showed it to her, and found that she like it too, I decided to get it for her.
Next came Viking Central: Norway. The most important feature of the Norway pavilion is their megawickedawesome chocolate covered pretzels. As I write this, I find myself suddenly debating going to the grocery store to find some sort of chocolaty dessert… however I know that I will be disappointed that I can’t find anything quite like this pretzel. As you can see, we also had our picture taken with a troll. The thought hadn’t occurred to me until it was too late… but with the way that Troll has his hand out… it could have made for one high-lare-eous spank photo. You’ll just have to settle for knowing that we were not spanked by a troll. We were pretty lucky this day in Epcot. If you’ll remember, the first thing we did when we got there was to buy rain gear, however we happened to be under a roof whenever it happened
to be raining.
After eating up my delicious pretzel, we headed over to the South American pavilion, where there were lots of incredibly colourful handmade carvings. It wasn’t just the carvings that had colour, everything had bright colors despite that the pavilion is set-up to look as though it’s night time. There were tons of handmade crafts here, mostly wood and leather. After looking around for a bit, we then took the Gran Fiesta Tour Starring The Three Caballeros. By the time we finished that, our stomachs were beginning to growl, and we had made a circuit of the park which covered almost everything, so we made the decision to wrap up our tour of Epcot.
And so we made our way back to the entrance, stopping on the way both to ride and take photos of Spaceship Earth. It’s actually not as late at night as the photo may lead you to believe, but the sun had indeed set while we were in the South American pavilion, and it was also at about this time that it ominously clouded over and began to pour. There ended up being no need for the 100% vinyl Mickey Mouse ponchos this day, but umbrellas were a welcome commodity on the trek back to the rental.