The Best Part of Vacation
I promise I’ll stop talking about our vacation after this post, but I wanted to share what the best part of the whole trip was for me. It wasn’t visiting Harry Potter World, or eating tons of amazing food, or enjoying the hot, sunny weather and palm trees.
It was spending five full days with Eric!
We are not usually the kind of couple who needs to be – or wants to be – together 24/7. We are both very independent and have our own hobbies and interests. But since Eric started school in September, he’s been really busy and I also like to stay really busy and keep a full schedule. This has resulted in several days over the last couple of months where we say goodbye to each other at 7:30 or 8:00 AM and don’t see each other again until 9:00 or 10:00 PM that night. Recently Eric was working so late at school some nights that I was in bed by the time he got home.
Also, when we were in Orlando our cell phones didn’t work (except for when we were at the hotel on wireless) and so there wasn’t that added distraction of playing on our phones when we were out for dinner (I’ll admit I can be really bad for doing this).
We were 100% focused on one another and we had so. much. fun. We let loose more than normal. We didn’t even think twice about having 2 or 3 drinks with dinner every night or a margarita in the middle of the day. We laughed till our stomachs hurt. We held hands. We whispered ‘I love you’ 100 times a day.
I really want to take some of the fun we had in Orlando and implement it into our every day lives more. We rarely go out to eat since it’s expensive and we’re more ‘order takeout and open a bottle of wine while catching up on TV shows or watching a movie for date night’ kind of people; usually while we’re also distracted by other things.
I want to have more date nights where we’re focused on each other and I leave my phone at home or upstairs so I’m not tempted to look at it.
I love traveling and taking vacations and having something like that to look forward to. But I think it’s also important to find joy and pleasure in our every day lives, which is why I’m going to try and make our day-to-day lives look a little bit more like the fabulous vacation we just came back from – minus the palm trees!
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What kinds of things do you do differently on vacation vs. every day life?
Medieval Times
Catching up on our whirlwind trip to Seattle and Orlando?
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A full 19 hours after we got in our shuttle to the airport in Orlando yesterday morning we arrived home last night! Eric is a rockstar for driving most of the way home through weather like this – on his birthday to boot!
Anyways, this is the first time I’ve had a chance to sit down with my computer since Sunday so I am recapping our last day in Orlando, which was Sunday, a little late!
The day started really relaxed. We slept in, ate breakfast at the hotel, lounged around, I wrote a blog post. It was lovely! Finally, around 11:00 AM we set out to walk the 0.5 miles to City Walk and pick up the caricature I’d forgotten at the restaurant the night before.
I am a little disappointed in our caricature because I do not think it looks like me at all. I totally see Eric in it though. What do you guys think?
After one last trip to the Universal/City Walk area we caught a cab to Kissimmee, which is about 15 miles away, because there was a giant flea market there Eric wanted to check out and that’s where we had tickets to Medieval Times that night.
The flea market was fun and I ended up buying a knock-off Guess wallet and we got a few souvenirs to take home. We also got our picture taken with these parrots (yes this is a picture of a picture, ha!) It’s funny because Eric is terrified in this picture. Lol
Then we decided to start walking in the direction of Medieval Times. We ended up walking 3.5 miles before getting a cab!
On the way we stopped at Cracker Barrel for lunch! I always hear about CB on Twitter and other blogs so I wanted to check it out. We ended up having a really good, inexpensive meal so I was impressed!
The place that finally made us stop walking was none other than Super Target! I had wanted to take Eric to a Target so when we came up on one I said we HAD to go in. We ended up buying some new work and school clothes.
Then we caught a cab to the main reason we were even in that area: Medieval Times! It was Eric’s 25th birthday yesterday and the whole trip was kind of for his birthday weekend but Medieval Times was something I booked especially for him (not really my thing) and Eric was really excited!
We decided since a) we were celebrating Eric’s birthday and b) it was the last night of our trip we were going to have a few drinks 
We were there 1.5 hours early so had a couple drinks and looked at all the stuff they had before the show started. Soon it was time to be seated!
I have been to Medieval Times in California before and have to admit it’s a pretty cool show. Basically you get to watch live jousting and sword fighting while enjoying a medieval times themed meal that you eat with your hands. Each person is given a colour of crown and section and that is the knight they are supposed to cheer for. Ours was the red knight and he died first. Boo!
The food was actually really good. We started with a tomato bisque soup and garlic toast – you had to drink the soup of course, there were no spoons!
I had the vegetarian meal which was a spear of grilled veggies, some wild rice with beans mixed in and hummus and tortilla chips. It was delicious!
Eric had a big hunk of roast chicken, a sparerib and a potato. All which he had to eat with his hands (I was given a fork for my rice, how nice!)
Lot’s of wine (me!) and beer (him!) was consumed.
It was a really fun night!
A $50 cab ride later (seriously, SO expensive) we were back at our hotel, quite tipsy, and attempting to pack our suitcase (Eric packed and I supervised) before we had to be up in 6 hours to catch our shuttle!
We had such a fun trip and I’ll admit I was a little sad for it to end! And that concludes the recaps, hope you enjoyed them
I am just starting to catch up on blogs now so tell me, how was your weekend?
Universal Studios
Good morning! Happy Sunday! I wanted to blog last night but I was dead on my feet after spending over 12 hours at Universal Studios!
But let’s rewind! Where I last left off Eric and I were looking for a place to go for appies and drinks since we were still very much on West Coast time and hungry at 9 PM. We ended up at Bahama Breeze, which despite being a very expensive cab ride, was really awesome!
We had a plethora of drinks and appies and just relaxed, chatted and enjoyed one anothers company. It was such a fun night and made Eric and I realize we need to make an effort to go on more date nights like this – with no phones! – when we’re at home.
We crashed into bed around midnight on Friday hoping that a full nights sleep would get us fully on east coast time finally!
Saturday morning we were tired and dragging our feet. We actually just missed the 8:45 shuttle to Universal but it came back so we were able to catch the second one. Before doing anything else we beelined it back to Harry Potter World for one last magical visit and to go on the Forbidden Journey ride one more time. This time we only waited about 40 minutes 
We sadly said our goodbyes to HP and headed over to spend the day at Universal!
Universal was really fun, and a lot less crowded than HP! We went on a bunch of rides while we there: Terminator, The Simpsons, Men in Black, Jaws, Disaster, Revenge of the Mummy and The Simpsons again.
It was a really fun day!
Finally around 3:00 PM we broke for lunch and had some very questionable, and very expensive, fried fish. At least our restaurant had a nice view of the park!
Universal was really cool and had a bunch of little “neighbourhoods” that were fun to wander through!
I loved the Christmas decorations
After going on The Simpsons ride for the second time (that ride was SO fun, up there with the Forbidden Journey as a must-do ride!) we actually got caricatures drawn of us. After sitting there for 35 minutes and paying $40 I was slightly disappointed because he’d drawn me with blonde hair.
However, I don’t have a photo to show you because I forgot it at the restaurant last night!! I was SO mad at myself but it turns out they called in the middle of the night to let me know they found it, so Eric and I are going back there today to pick it up and I’ll share a photo in the next post!
Anyways, after the Simpson ride and getting our photo drawn it was time to meet Stephany for dinner!
We met at the Hard Rock Cafe, which was really good. It’s also the biggest Hard Rock Cafe in the world – little tidbit for you Stephany was awesome and we had so much fun chatting about blogging, books and other things!
After we said goodbye to Stephany Eric and I wandered along CityWalk one more time and considered going for a drink, but then we decided we were just too tired and headed back to the hotel for sleep!
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Today is our last day in Orlando and we’re planning on going back to CityWalk to get our caricature, and then taking a cab to this giant flea market and tonight we have tickets for Medieval Times.
Our trip has been amazing and so, so fun but also has ended up costing a lot more than we budgeted for. I never realized that we would have to take a cab EVERYWHERE we went since nothing is walkable nor is there good public transportation in this city. We paid $33 to go 8 miles in a cab on Friday night! By the end of the trip we’ll have easily spent over $200 on cab fares which seems nuts to me since we’ve taken advantage of the free shuttle every chance we could and also took a shared shuttle ride to and from the airport to save a bit of money.
Eating has also been really, really expensive and it’s almost impossible to eat cheaply. I’m not complaining, just things we didn’t think about when planning the trip! I also thought three days here would feel really short but it’s actually been perfect and is kind of similar to Vegas in that respect. Everything is just so go-go-go and expensive we are ready to go home after three days!
Anyways, those are just some of my observations from the trip so far. See you tonight or tomorrow with one last recap