View the complete gallery + videos from the trip.
Annnnd I’m back in the Pacific Northwest. Am I glad? Yes. I love my town. Lets just say my body is still very confused and I am cold…. Going from 80+ degree weather back to 50 will do that. Oh well. It was bound to happen.
I will admit that I wanted to blog every day, but the wifi/cell service down there was horrible. Annnnd WordPress on an iPad didn’t corporate nicely so I gave up. I even had a draft saved. It didn’t help that I didn’t have a whole lot of time either. I ran most of the days–even if we walked for like 5 hrs a day at Universal and Disneyworld. So guess who lost weight? This girl!
Anywho, here’s the recap of the days:
Day 1 (my last blog): Universal Studios + Outlets
Yesssss… got the studios and did a lot of walking and even more rides than I think we anticipated. We headed straight for Harry Potter world, of course. Road the Hogwarts Express to “London”/Diagon Alley and back. Lots of shops. The three of us got to try Butter beer. I got an interactive Hermione wand. FREAKIN’ LOVED IT. Mom and I got to go on the Hogwarts “Broomstick” (yea right) ride. Despite the weather being in the mid 80’s, there were a TON of kids running around in Hogwarts robes (which were like $110). I was in a tank top and shorts and was dying in the heat but loving being in a tank top again AND FLIP FLOPS. Love my flip flops.
On our way out of the park (like 6 hrs later), we stopped at Margaritaville. Mom shopped while Dad and I had a drink. Dad, his usual beer, and I decided to try a Margarita which was not my fave. More hard alcohol than flavoring. Welllll…needless to say, after spending a lot of time in the sun, not eating anything since 11 that morning, the alcohol hit me a little bit (even if I tried to fit it with 2 glasses of water right after). I wasn’t walking funny, but I knew I was a little buzzed because I talk a lot when I am (my poor dad) and it turns out that I’m not a great navigator (my duty while dad was driving) while buzzed. It only took “Oh you know you were supposed to turn there” and I was fine. Really it wasn’t a bad screw up. Just freakin’ hilarious.
Anywho, right from the park, we headed straight to the outlets outside our resort. My sister is a hardcore Kate Spade fan, and dad forgot to pack shirts. Dad and I didn’t pack our swimming suits either. Found the Kate Spade store. Dropped mom there and dad and I took off to the Nike store. Attempted to find shirts for dad (which we ended up returning all but one) and went back to mom who bought several purses (and ended up returning the one too…Tink didn’t like it). After another 2 1/2 hrs of shopping (I don’t remember buying a single thing), we finally headed back to the resort and sat down at the pool at 9pm for dinner. We all slept good that night.
Day 2 (runless day): Walmart + Universal Studios
Well…..we really failed with finding some stuff for papa to wear. Sooo…asked Siri to find the closest Walmart and off we went. I find it amusing that we travel clear across the continent and we still go shopping at Walmart. The people there are still just as crazy and personally, the workers were pretty flat. Found dad some shirts, found a swimming suit for me and some additional food for back at the resort and off we went back to Universal (after a Starbucks run of course). I’m glad we went to Walmart first. It turned out it was a faster route. We got stuck on the Universal exit last time off of I-4. Taking the back roads was faster.
Today was about shopping more (for me and friends) and we expanded outside of the Harry Potter area. Went to a couple 3D shows and saw some cool things. I think we were all pretty exhausted from the day before so after a bite to eat, we headed back to the resort.
Day 3: Back to the Outlets + Rippley’s Believe it or Not + Pirate Show
We decided we were good on Universal and despite having a 3rd day on our pass, we decided to try some other things. None of the other things were nearly as exciting as the Studios, but we got to see more of Orlando.
We started with returning all the stuff back to the Outlets. Mom bought more at the Kate Spade store and we returned nearly everything to the Nike store. I’m just not a Nike fan.
Then we headed to Rippley’s Believe it or Not. It was…weird. More like a museum than anything. I can’t even explain it. After that, we headed back to the resort and sat at the pool for a bit. We then headed to a dinner Pirate Show. Last time we were in Orlando (with Tink), we went to Medieval Times which was a dinner/jousting show. It was awesome. Well the pirate show wasn’t close it, but it was something different. Our view of the show was hidden behind one of the masts for a good portion so it kind of killed it for the three of us. Can’t win them all.
Day 4: Disney World
My last day in Florida was back at Disney World to use our last day on our Hopper passes from 10 years ago. We went in 2005. Dad wanted to go to Epcot so that’s where we started. We didn’t go on any rides, but went to a couple of shows. Really Epcot is just mainly shops–hardly any rides. They have different places in the park (Mexico, London, Paris), that you could walk through. So it was a lot of walking and mom was getting really tired. My feet and legs were pretty okay. My back wasn’t happy but the rest of me was A-Okay. Yay for good running shoes!
After circling the park, we jumped on the bus to head over to Animal Kingdom. This park was more shaded. We went on a couple of rides and called it quits. It was a lot. I wish we had more one day to see the other parks that I enjoyed, but I wasn’t going to push it. I was okay with that. So we headed back to the resort.
Funny story that night. After getting back to the resort, dad started to drink and finish off his 6-pack. Mom and I walked down to the convenience store that was at the resort to get him more, but refused to pay $5 a bottle for more. So mom and I walked across the street to Publix to get him another 6pack. We thought the beer was cheap and didn’t think much about it. Get back to the resort and dad looks at the beer and started to laugh. They were mini beers. 7 oz beers. They didn’t even fit in his beer koozie!! I have a hilarious video of dad playing hide and seek with the mini beer. Freakin’ hilarious.
The next day, after several flight delays and changing airlines the night before, I boarded a flight at 7:45 am to Minneapolis (which I’ve never been before) and then from there to Spokane. I was glad to be home. Nervous for the half and even more nervous to begin marathon training. I’m doing a 20 week plan and this time I’m alone for it. Hopefully thanks to the tri-training, it won’t make me hate running again like the last time I did marathon training alone.
On a last note, running in Florida. I ran 3 out of the 4 days I was down there. Yes, I’m crazy, but I wasn’t the only ones running around the resort. I stayed mostly around the lake at the resort (Lake Alexander), but I got bored after 2 laps and would usually venture out to the Shopping Outlets next door. They were outside outlets so I could view all the stores. I, being a geek, took my watch down so I could get a signal on the GPS and view the runs later on. The first day of running was horrendous, but the other days I saw improvement–despite the lack of coffee and food in my system. My elevation gain was horrible (only 9 ft), but that’s okay. I just wanted to keep my legs pumping because I was coming back to do a half on Sunday. The humidity really got to me and I always came back sweaty, but at least I got them in.
Alright. I’m beat and I’m going to go make dinner.
Later!
CBloss