I left you on Saturday evening as we watched X factor. We had a later night and so had a lie in on Sunday until the start of the Brazilian GP pre-amble. We watched Jake on his last BBC broadcast before he turns to the dark side (football). It was certainly a thrilling race with the weather making it a bit of a lottery. There were times when we really thought Alonso had got it but Vettel’s luck struck again. How can a guy who gets hit at turn 2 then chooses the wrong tyres still do enough – the guy is truly blessed. Lewis on the other hand gets hit and taken out for yet another DNF. I loved his interview afterwards where he looks around to see who else is in the interview area and then says “the dude didn’t even come and apologise, that’s what you get racing with inexperienced drivers” Hulkenburg clearly saw this as there was a 5th driver tweet later showing him apologising to Lewis. I gotta say, despite not being a fan I had to feel for Alonso. He looked absolutely gutted at the end and yet maintained his composure and was graceful in defeat. I think I’ll hate Hulkenburg for a while!
After the race we headed out to Magic Kingdom once more. Since the whole parking, tram, boat or monorail is a bit of a bind we decided to buck the system a little so parked at the Grand Floridian hotel so we could get the boat shuttle to MK. We firstly wandered through the hotel stores and checked out the gingerbread house. It was really big – about 20 ft tall and easily 30 ft wide we reckon. They also sold gingerbread house models for Christmas which were adorable but not conducive to being packed in a suitcase we figured.
Once in MK we took the train around to the new Fantasyland. Since we’d only seen it in the dark before Paul took the opportunity to take some pics. We also stopped for some more Le Fou’s brew at Gaston’s Tavern and sat in the sun to drink it.
After this we went into Philharmagic. We got straight in again but it was quite full. There were also some quite annoying parents behind us narrating to their toddler. We then went into Small World. It had a 15 min queue but it seemed to move quickly. We wanted to ride Pirates but when we got over there it too had a 15 min queue but it looked way more than that to us so we left. We’d done enough and despite this not sounding much we were probably in there for about 3 hours or so and with the annual passes we’re not losing anything,
We came out and chose Kobe for dinner. We got there bout 6:30 and had to wait about 15 minutes to get seated. We had a family (parents with toddler) at our table and then an older couple with one of their grown up kids and partner. We had a spare seat too. As Mickey (the same chef from last time for those paying attention) began his act the elderly couple seemed less than amused. The small Shamu bit with the shrimp they seemed to find really uncouth and smiled at nothing, They refused the onion, making the chef cook it separately rather than merely leaving it on the plate and had the rice cooked with no onion. About half way through cooking the elderly woman looked horrified at her daughter and said ‘he’s cooking with coca cola’ the daughter replied ‘no, its soy’, the mother insisted it was coca cola saying she had heard the chef say so. At that point the chef added more sauce with his familiar coca cola saying and the mother added triumphantly ‘see, I told you – he just said its coca cola’. I decided to explain that it was a joke and she asked me what I meant. I must have said it was a joke, it is meant to be funny and its humour a few times and all I got was blank looks. Eventually the son-in-law seemed to get it and started laughing, he explained to his wife and the younger couple were then in stitches. Mom and dad were still less than amused. This was clearly their first time at Kobe and something tells me it would also be their last. To top it all, at the end of the meal the manager came over and said ‘who’s got an anniversary?’ and it turned out the be the elderly couple. The waiter promptly plonked Kobe paper chef hats on their heads and pulled out a camera. They looked horrified, most indignant and shouted no to the camera. The daughter and son-in-law found it highly amusing, slightly egged on Paul and I who were also finding it amusing. Their only saving grace was that the Kobe camera was broken so they got away with no pic on the website. I’m not sure the Japanese steak house they had clearly selected for their anniversary dinner turned out quite as they expected but it sure gave us some entertainment. We did want to go to the Polynesian beach to watch the fireworks but we’d have almost 2 hours to kill so with no bright ideas as to how, we decided to come home and watched the X Factor results and Jakes last F1 forum. We also caught up on the final Tooned episodes on YouTube.
Today is Monday and we have had a gentle day with a late start again. We began by going to Theme park connection, a warehouse type store that sells (buys and trades) Disney theme park memorabilia. Not just stuff you could have bought but actually park signs and models as well. They even had cast member costumes and badges. Paul got a name badge (he’s from Oakland MD now). Sadly all the Cindy ones were broken so I couldn’t get one. It was a cool place, we’ll deffo go back.
Since we were in the right area we decided to go to West Oaks mall. It was dead and in fact many of the shops were shut so I’m not sure how much longer it will last. We stopped for lunch first at Charley’s grilled subs (formerly Charley’s steakery) and had Teriyaki chicken with loaded fries and a mountain dew.
We then looked in JC Penny and Dillards. Paul managed to get a work shirt and I got a pair of Levi’s. We then visited Stein Mart on the way home to see if we could get anymore bargain Christmas gifts but to no avail.
We came home for a couple of hours (checked email and watched Return of the Jedi) then headed out to Applebees for dinner at about 7. We had a $10 voucher from last week when the manager didn’t visit our table so we had dinner for a whopping $15. Paul had the French dip sandwich again and I opted for the chicken and coleslaw taco’s. It was fairly busy in there for a Monday evening but we were in and out within about 40 minutes.
We are now home with a cuppa and some biscuits (Golden Oreo’s) planning our final days… we so don’t want to come home.