The Adults Only Tour 2015 – Day Six

Day Six – 1^st September

In the history of bad nights’ sleep, last night was only surpassed in awesomeness by my level of illness. I felt like poop. I suppose by staying awake all of the night I was getting more value for my holiday buck, being conscious for more precious hours. Yeh, I’m not convincing myself either.

I got out of bed at 6.30 and waited for others to join me. Grandad was up first which was all that mattered this morning as today was golf day for the men folk. This is a tradition on my birthday, which I selflessly sacrificed yesterday for others. The benefit of being up so early was that I was able to get on the PC and look for a suitable golf course with a budget that matched my ability…..which is average. I settled on a course called Providence and after showers and some breakfast we were out at 8.40.

I could tell the choice of course was a good one even as we approached. The road up to the course was lined with newly built, quite impressive villas and as we pulled into the car park the club house looked pretty impressive too.

We hired some clubs, bought lots of balls (I am always likely to need a good number) and boarded our buggy.

We teed off just after nine and it was already roasting hot. The temperature only rose as the standard of my golf decreased.

As we got to one tee, with the customary water nearby I caught sight of something watching us.

I didn’t get that close to it, I just have a decent zoom on my camera. What followed were two of the quickest tee shots in the history of golf.

On one hole we were caught up by a chap playing on his own with his wife driving the cart. As we let him play through (honestly, it’s as if I have done nothing else but play golf all of my life with all this golf lingo) we discovered he was from Chorley, which for those who don’t know is about twenty minutes from Bolton. When you are in Florida that’s close enough to assume you are actually related and we used our familiar accents to talk about home for a bit.

On the back nine (another technical term only known by superior golfers) we caught up with a four ball (see, this jargon is just so natural to me) and ended up waiting around as they took about twenty minutes over every putt. This meant that we were caught up again by another chap behind us playing by himself. We invited him to play in with us.

He was called Dave, from Virginia, and we chatted and laughed at my shots for the last few holes.

We were done by 12.40 and made it back to the pro shop as two slightly red balls of sweat. We even had some balls left which was a big enough victory for me. My performance can be summarised as patchy which I would have settled for before teeing off as I hadn’t played for two years and I was crap then too.

We drove back to the villa and arrived at 1pm. About one minute later we were both in the pool trying to reduce our body temperature to double figures. About five minutes later Grandad realised that he had left his (expensive) watch in the golf buggy so he called the golf club. It hadn’t been found but they said they would keep an eye out for it. It was never recovered so whoever parked and cleaned our buggy is now sporting Grandad’s retirement present from work. That left a bit of a sour taste in the mouth about that particular course I have to say.

We did lots of nothing for a couple of hours by the pool until readying started around 3pm. About ten minutes prior to departure I got ready too and I was gracious enough to drive everyone to Celebration where we planned to have our tea/dinner.

Market Street Café is a firm favourite of ours based upon a couple of previous visits. It was empty, as it always tends to be, which is a big surprise based upon its quality.

We were seated and ordered –

3 lots of cheesy fried and some Nachos as appetisers

Then we had –

Me – Taco Salad

Grandad – Beef Stroganoff

Nana – Chicken Salad Sandwich

Sarah – Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich

Rebecca just had cheesy fries as there were lots and lots of those.

The dessert menu is on one of these, which is good fun.

We were all so stuffed that we just got one Banana Cream Pie to share, apart from Sarah who had Brownies a la Mode.

The Banana Cream Pie deserves another photo as it is beyond awesome.

The bill was $160 including a good tip and we left vowing never to eat ever again. We had our usual stroll down to the lake….

and then over to the Woofgang bakery shop.

Next door to that was some sort of ice cream and cake shop which just made us feel sick to look in the window so I wandered off towards the fountain. As I did, I noticed a large dog being walked, so I made my way over to give it a stroke.

He was called Otis and he was awesome. As soon as I started to stroke him he fell on his side and his eyes went all funny, which is something I can relate to….

and he stayed that way for the next half an hour as he lapped up all the attention he was getting. Personally speaking, half an hour of being stroked is nothing more than a record I aspire to.

We chatted with his owner and couldn’t bring ourselves to let them continue their walk. Eventually she made a run for it with us continuing to take photos.

Apparently he is quite the celebrity in Celebration so do look out for him if you go, and you should.

We left Celebration and made our way to Old Town as we hadn’t been for years. We parked up and started to have a look around.

We very quickly realised why we hadn’t been for years. We did not enjoy it. It was tacky, cheap and one of the few places in Orlando that I was aware that I didn’t feel entirely safe. The lowlight for me was some “attraction” that involved a dummy being electrocuted in an electric chair in a very graphic manner. As we passed, slack-jawed in amazement that it existed, a large family were watching it, including small kids who looked absolutely terrified at the very realistic depiction of someone being filled with thousands of volts. Very odd and quite disturbing. I didn’t video it but found this on You Tube.

Sarah was seriously considering going on the catapult thing that flings you up in the air in a metal ball but Rebecca was less convinced having seen it up close. I was frankly quite relieved that they decided against it as the thought of them entrusting their lives to something hosted at Old Town was not something I was very comfy with. Am I giving off the impression that we were not keen on this place?

We walked around a lot of shops and saw a lot of tat. We lasted about an hour before deciding to leave and probably never return. We stopped at the Publix on the way home which was frankly more enjoyable and nicer to walk around. We were asleep by nine. Rock and Roll!!

Till the next time…..