A bottle of white, a bottle of red Perhaps a bottle of rose instead
A metaphor to life and to this trip. After almost a week we are now starting to feel we are relaxing into this holiday, despite the heat strangely waking me in the night. Another lovely day greeted me as I had breakfast by the pool. Our plan was to be up and out relatively early but I ended up having to gently wake Karen as she was sleeping deep in slumberland at 9.30am.
By 10.30am we were on the road. Today’s first port of call was a walk around the Lake at Coronado Springs to get a coffee. It was glorious. As we left Hotel lobby there were a number of organised activities taking place as it was Easter Sunday. One of which was they had a large-scale pool table set on the ground with foam bumpers on the ground. The balls were actually coloured numbered footballs. I wanted to play but there were too many pesky kids just kicking the balls indiscriminately everywhere obviously not understanding the rules. I had to be satisfied with chipping one back onto the ‘table’ area from a flower bed.
As we wandered around the Lake, we took a detour to the impressively themed pool area. Here we hatched a plan to come back here on our last day when we have to be out of the villa by 10am but our return flight is not until 8pm. There was somewhere we could sit and get food and drink as well as shower afterwards. There were signs saying that the pool was for Disney guests only but nothing else about other facilities. We will see if we are brave enough to try on the day itself.
After walking almost around the Lake, we stopped at the café and found a table in the shade. Karen had fun getting the drinks as obviously ordering Hot Tea is not a regular occurrence here. She said the staff were lovely and tried their best to be helpful but didn’t have a clue how/where/what to do with such a request despite it being on the menu board. Despite this it tasted fine.
We sat in the sun for about a hour just enjoying the view, the peace and quiet as well as the free Wifi.
I was by then starting to get hungry and ready to move, so we went back to the car and headed to Disney Springs. The sun was getting hotter and the temperature was hitting 31c. However, the forecast was for heavy rain later this evening. Here in Florida, it is starting to head towards the Storm and Hurricane season. This year they are predicting a worse than normal number of them because of a build-up of other weather events elsewhere. As a prelude to that they have just published the A-Z of names they will be using this year. I am excited that this year there will be a Storm or Hurricane Karl will be hitting the USA. I am looking forward to tracking its progress in due course.
Disney Springs was nowhere near as busy as on our previous visit. We parked easily and made our way in. We decided to get some food to start with. I had no idea what to get until I remembered Blaze Pizza. So, I had one of their 180 second Pizzas whilst Karen went for a Salad from the same place. The pizza was so good.
We wandered into a couple of shops (no detail as we may have bought a present for someone) before arriving at Ghirardelli. Here Karen went and queued whilst I had a challenge to get a table. Surprisingly where we normally sat was all free so I sat down. I lasted about a minute before I realised why most of the tables were empty. Only two of them had parasols, the rest were in full sun and were unbearably hot. Now if I thought that then Karen would doubly think so. So instead, I went back to the store and hovered waiting directly outside to pounce to get a table undercover. Eventually I did so.
Now the trick was to somehow get Karen’s attention as I was in a place in the opposite direction to where she would be expecting. Karen has the amazing ability to not see me when she is looking for me at the best of times. I can be sometimes directly in front of her and I mean directly in her line of sight and yet she manages to keep looking around and past me but not seeing me. Sometimes strangers have had to point out to her that there is a strange man only 20 feet away waving frantically at her. Fortunately, as I was not sat in the place she was expecting, this time she did see me.
Whilst eating her ice cream in the shade, Karen did spend most of the time bemoaning the cost of it and that it was a good job she only had to buy what she did and not for a large family with children.
Then we went into another shop to get a top that Ellie had sweetly asked us to purchase for her. We wanted to be 100% sure of the size and ended up having an impromptu Facetime with both her and Barry whilst in the quite noisy shop. It was lovely to see them both even if we were not in the most ideal location for a conversation, but at least Ellie was able to make her own decision on the T Shirt.
After more of a dawdle around and finding an appropriate hat for Karen that she didn’t purchase, we wandered back to one of the Starbucks. We again found a table at the back in the shade overlooking where the balloon flights were going up and down. I had an iced water which was much needed. The balloon flight only operates in very low wind conditions and we could see why. On one trip there were some presumed unexpected gusts and the balloon was going all over the place despite being attached by the wire. It made for a hairy bouncy landing and they stopped taking people up after that.
Waze took us a very interesting way back to the Villa and again managed to avoid any hold ups that would have got me tutting to myself.
When we opened the villa door, the interior heat hit us. We then realised that the air con had not been working and come to think of it we couldn’t recall hearing it on since we had been there. We didn’t even know where the controller was. We found it and checked it and everything on it seemed fine. But the villa was definitely too warm to be comfortable. It must have been that that had woken me in the night.
I found the number for the management company and left a message about the problem. Within 10 minutes they were there at the door which was amazing. It was a Brit who apparently lives in the house 3 doors down which was handy. He spent about 20 minutes investigating the problem but concluded it needed a technician to fix. His opinion was it was either a circuit board had blown or it needed a new compressor at a cost to the owner of more than $5k. He apologised and said they would not be able to fix until the morning, which we thought was reasonable given it was evening time. He told us to get all the doors open for as long as possible and switch all the fans on which we did and the villa did start to cool down somewhat.
We decided to have a take-out meal and Karen fancied Pizza, meaning I had it for lunch and dinner. After faffing about and failing trying to pay online with my credit card (needed to have been registered with a US Zip code) I decided to pay cash on delivery. The wait time said 55 minutes. It turned up after 15 minutes. For less than the price of one slice of Pizza in the Disney Parks, we got a large Pizza each that will end up doing for 2 meals.
Whilst eating it watching yet more Shark Tank, the promised rain arrived. It was torrential for a couple of hours and apparently deposited over 3 inches of rain. It was quite impressive especially as we sat there, we all the doors open to let the cooler air in.
You can only have so much of a good time and so after finishing off the wine we retired for the night.
