The One With the Porch Swing in Tupelo

  Orlando, Florida, United States
Tuesday, August 7, 2007

01 - Hanging Out Around the House

Today I woke up at 11:00 and was still exhausted.  All night I had the weirdest dreams about friends I had in high school and Sex and the City.  Again.  Yes, it was definitely weird!  I went into the kitchen and saw that mom and dad had gotten bagels from Dunken Donuts.  They don't at all compare to Brooklyn bagels but they would have to do.  I had a bagel, a little piece of carrot cake and chocolate milk for breakfast.

02 - Hanging Out Around the House

I took a shower at 12:00 and got ready.  As much as I love the parks, I also love our free days and today was one of them.  There are so many fun attractions and sites in Orlando outside of the parks, and a lot of people miss them when they stay at the Disney and Universal resorts and never venture off property.  On each trip we like to take a few days off to just relax, go shopping, eat at different restaurants and take in some of the sites.

03 - Hanging Out Around the House

After I took a shower I called mom and dad to see where they were.  They had stopped by the post office to Fed-Ex my Aunt Debbie the check that Loyalty Homes had given us with our refund.  There aren't at Citibank's in Orlando and we wanted to make sure that the check cleared before we left the area.  So we were going to Fed-Ex it to my aunt, have her cash it into our account in Brooklyn, and then check our account online a few days later to see if the check cleared.  I couldn't wait for it to clear... I wanted it to clear before I wrote to Loyalty Homes and Sue about exactly what I thought of the entire situation!

06 - Hanging Out Around the House

I watched Drake and Josh while I got ready, and then I hung out in the living room and watched Step By Step and Boy Meets World on the Family Channel, two of my absolute favorite shows!  Nothing on these days could even compare to classic TGIF.  Seriously.  Mom and dad were back by 2:00, when Michael got up and got ready.  It was definitely a lazy day.  At 2:30 we all sat in the living room and watched Boy Meets World.  I'm the only one who really loves it so I make everyone watch it whenever it's on and we're all in the same room, and they all make sure to give me a hard time about it!  I also went online and searched around for some new non-Disney restaurants to eat in.  There are tons and tons of restaurants in Orlando, so after I got over the initial disappointment of cutting out a lot of our Disney restaurants, I got excited about finding some new ones.

14 - Wonderworks

At 4:00 we left for Pointe Orlando.  I love Bath and Body Works and I always like to get new seasonal creams from their signature line sp I wanted to get some new fall ones while we were in Orlando.  The closest Bath and Body Works was at Pointe Orlando, a little shopping center on International Drive.  It took us twenty-minutes to get there since we got kind of lost on the way.  Maggie got us to the right area but we were routed into the Wonderworks parking lot instead of the Pointe Orlando parking lot, so we had to drive around for a while looking for it.  I took pictures along the way.

17 - Pointe Orlando

We finally found the parking lot and it was an indoor one.  We had to pay $2 for parking which was crazy considering we were only going to be there for twenty minutes but what can you do?  It wasn't at all crowded and we found a spot right away.  We walked around and it was hot out there!  It wasn't too bad but it would have been nice to go to an indoor mall.

18 - Pointe Orlando

There were a few stands out in the middle of the walkways selling jewelry, souvenirs and electronics.  None of it was that nice, though, so we just kept walking.  There was an Armani Exchange and lots of designer stores that we weren't interested in either.  Bath and Body Works was on the complete other side of the shopping center than where we were and it took us a while to find it.  Once we got there we headed inside and it was nice to escape from the heat for a while.

19 - Pointe Orlando

Have I mentioned how much I love Bath and Body Works?!  The smell in there is SO good as soon as you walk in!  I looked at the whole wall of Signature Collection products and was in Heaven.  I usually love the Tropical Passionfruit, Exotic Coconut and Warm Vanilla Sugar scents but I wanted to try something new.  I smelled them all and tried a lot of them on before finally deciding on Japanese Cherry Blossom.  It was so good!  I picked out four creams and went to pay.  When I paid they gave me a coupon for the Japanese Cherry Blossom perfume and I just had to get it.  It smelled like a mixture between cherries and baby powder.  It all came to $40.  After Bath and Body Works we ran into B. Dalton which was on the way back to the parking lot.  Mike and I always wind up buying new books in Orlando since for some reason they're a lot cheaper there than they are here.  All the books here were ridiculously expensive, though.  We have a B. Dalton in the city that isn't even expensive as this one was.  It was like being next to Armani Exchange made it OK to charge a ridiculous amount for a book!  We left after a few minutes.  All in all, I didn't really like Pointe Orlando.  There's just not much there and whatever was there seemed ridiculously overpriced.  At least I was able to find what I wanted at Bath and Body Works so it wasn't a complete waste of time.  Would we go back?  Probably not.  We have a million Bath and Body Works stores around here so I'd just get what I wanted at home instead of bothering to head back down to Pointe Orlando.

20 - Cracker Barrel

We were out of Pointe Orlando by 4:45 and we headed back down towards our end of 192 to go for dinner at Cracker Barrel.  We love Cracker Barrel!  It's mainly a southern restaurant so we don't have any around her... I think the closest one's in Pennsylvania.  We'd gone shopping in the Cracker Barrel store a few times while we were in Lancaster, Pennsylvania back in the summer of 2004, but we never actually ate at Cracker Barrel until we were in Orlando in 2005 and it's become a tradition ever since!  In 2005 we were on the same end of 192 as we were now and that Cracker Barrel was always great!.  It was clean, the food was delicious and the wait staff was awesome.  In 2006, though, we were on the other end of 192 and the Cracker Barrel down there wasn't very good so we were psyched to again be near the good Cracker Barrel.  Yes, I just wrote an entire paragraph on our love of a certain Cracker Barrel.  Moving on...

23 - Cracker Barrel

We got there by 5:00, parked and went inside.  It was still pretty early so we were seated right away.  It's always crowded but we've never had a long wait for Cracker Barrel... except for when we went for breakfast, but more on that later.  We were seated and mom's silverware had grossness on it and the waitress was nowhere in sight.  It took her a good ten minutes to show up and she wasn't very friendly at first but she quickly brought mom new silverware and all of us biscuits, and she got a lot friendlier from then on! And she really did, it wasn't just the effects of the DELICIOUS biscuits.  I love those biscuits!

24 - Cracker Barrel

We ordered a few minutes later and I wanted to try something new.  I usually get chicken fingers and three sides which are always really good, but I decided to get the roast beef dinner with fries, fried okra, coleslaw and raspberry lemonade.  Dad got chicken fingers with fries, macaroni and cheese and corn; and mom and Mike both got huge salads with fried chicken, cheddar cheese and lots of other toppings.  The food was so good!  My roast beef was more like a big piece of pot roast, it was flaky and as soft as butter.  The fried okra was great, too and was something I'd never had before.  Delish!  Everyone else also loved their food and you get so much of it for the price!

29 - Cracker Barrel

When we were done eating we went next door to the store.  They had a lot of cute dress-up outfits and we wanted to get something for my little cousin Alison.  A really nice woman in there helped us find everything they had but all of the princess dresses were too small and they really weren't that nice for $30.  They had really cute dog and cat stuffed animals that slept on pillows and their stomachs went up and down like they were breathing, though!  I wound up just getting three rock candy lollipops (for old time sake, we used to love getting rock candy when we were little at all the caves we'd visit on vacation in upstate New York!) and two coconut bars all for $4.

31 - Cracker Barrel

When we were done in there we went outside and took some pictures by the rocking chairs.  I love sitting out on those rocking chairs!  I'm the biggest Elton John fan ever... when I saw him at Madison Square Garden in 2005 I was literally in tears!  I absolutely loved one of his newer albums, Peachtree Road, and there's a song called "Porch Swing in Tupelo" on it.  I'm a city girl through and through but I love visiting the country and just relaxing and taking it easy amongst nature.  I don't get to do that very often, though, and Orlando isn't exactly the country, but relaxing on those rocking chairs and listening to the country music reminded me of "Porch Swing in Tupelo."  Yes, that was a completely random story, haha!

33 - Cracker Barrel

Done with Cracker Barrel, we drove a few stores down to a liquor store in a shopping center to get Malibu Coconut Rum.  I LOVE that stuff!  Not even mixed with anything, just on the rocks.  MMM!  Then we drove over to a gas station to get a bag of ice and we were set.  I'll admit I drank it all of three times during the entire vacation and we had to bring it all home (where it's still sitting in the liquor cabinet), but it's so good for once in a while!

34 - Hanging Out Around the House

On the way home we heard a commercial on the radio for a Pink Floyd laser rock show at the Orlando Science Center.  How awesome would that be?!  We have a really cool laser show called SonicVision at the Museum of Natural History here in the city.  It was created by Moby and MTV, and they play really good rock music to awesome special effects but it's mainly new music.  I wanted to go to a Pink Floyd show!  My mom grew up as a HUGE Pink Floyd fan and she's passed it on to me.  Love Pink Floyd.  I made a mental note to look it up online once we got back to the house and we tried to get home as soon as possible because all of a sudden there was a lot of thunder and lightning in the area and we wanted to make it home before it rained.

35 - Hanging Out Around the House

We were back at the house by 7:30 and there wasn't any thunder, lightning or rain in sight.  That's what I love about Orlando - it could be pouring in one area and crystal clear, sunny and gorgeous three blocks away.  It's crazy!  Since it was so nice out dad and Mike went in the pool for a while, and mom sat out on the patio while I went online and got some information on the laser rock show.  There were four of them on select nights - two different Pink Floyd shows, a Led Zeppelin show, and an 80's rock music show.  Awesome!  It was $10 for two shows so we wanted to see the two Pink Floyd ones.  There wasn't really a day to fit them into the schedule, though.  I tried and tried and tried, but we'd really have to move things around if we wanted to go.  It was a pain and too much work for a laser show so we decided to forget it.  Definitely next time!  While I was online I also looked at the pictures from the day before and had some coconut rum before I sat out in the backyard for a little while.

38 - Hanging Out Around the House

We were all back in the house by 8:00 where dad and Mike took showers and I worked on my trip report notes.  Then we all watched America's Got Talent and Big Brother, two of our favorite summer shows.  At 10:00 we all played California Rummy in the kitchen and Mike won AGAIN!  What the hell?!  Haha!  We were done playing by 11:00 when I changed into my pajamas and watched LA Ink in my room and then some of Conan before falling asleep by 1:00.