Reporting from Osceola County
LAT 28.2, LON 81.3 degrees
Today was kind of miscellaneous. Our sister and brother-in-law began the arduous journey to Chicago after closing up the AirBnB, and Mindy, Kathy and I got breakfast at a local diner (French toast), which was excellent.
We then headed over to the hotel for the night, so that we could leave some of our luggage there and leave some room for today's guest, our good friend Janet. We had read about deals on Disney stuff outside of the parks, but had little luck. The first place just had Disney pins, while the second was in an outlet mall so packed that there literally were no parking spaces free.
So we headed to our next place--Costco. Specifically, the Costco Business Center. There's only a handful of these in the US, and we had heard they were interesting. Think of a Costco without a pharmacy or closes, and with buckets of cooking ingredients as well as a whole pig. You can also pick up an industrial deep fryer. All it takes is a Costco card and some imagination.
We stopped for lunch at Chicken Salad Chick, a chain near us at home, but one Janet had not tried, and Kathy couldn't get at home. It's variations on chicken salad sammiches. After that, we dropped off Janet and returned to the hotel for a nap.
That night, we picked up both Janet and her husband, my old friend Bill. He's our Disney “connection”. They live in Celebration, a town Disney created that is closer to Walt's vision for EPCOT than the park. Lots of lovely homes with front porches, tree lined streets, and a walkable downtown. To say they “do up the holidays” is an understatement. It's a picture postcard worthy of a Hallmark movie. Carriage rides, skating, and "snow" on the hour (actually soap). There's bakeries every few feet--well, you need somewhere for the former child actress, now big city girl, to find her love/prince in her old hometown.
Enough for one day. Tomorrow--Hollywood!
#parkhopping