Month: December 2022

The No Parks and Recreation Tour 2022 – Day Fourteen

by mkingdon, posted in The No Parks and Recreation Tour 2022

Sunday 2nd of October

We’ve experienced all kinds of things in Florida, the vast majority good of course, but you don’t visit a place as much as we do and avoid encountering upsets, arguments and downright upsetting stuff over all those years.

Today, however, is something I have no idea how to write about. Only my type A, OCD need for completing stuff sees me sitting at the keyboard and having to get through it. So here we go….

I was still waking up at 6am despite the holiday being almost over. Thanks, body clock. We watched another episode of Dahmer via Netflix and I think Louise nodded back off for a bit. Emily was with Mary back home and we were calling and messaging constantly with the latest updates etc.

At around 8.55am Florida time, Emily sent us two words. “She’s gone”.

She immediately called us, and Rebecca joined the call from her home too. We had all been preparing ourselves for this moment for at least eight or nine months since Mary had a stroke in December 2021 and had to come and live with us. There had been many times in those months that we thought she was leaving us, only to bounce back like the fighter she was, but all that preparation did not make it any easier now.

There were lots of tears, of course, accompanied by a numb feeling of disbelief. After a while, we all hung up and we began the process of informing those who needed to know and arranging things such as a funeral director. Thankfully, technology and much-improved roaming contracts made this much easier than it may have been a few years ago.

We also spoke to the nursing home and went through what would happen between now and when we would get home. As much as Louise feels incredibly guilty about being away when her Mum passed, any attempt to fly home earlier than scheduled, once we suspected we may not get back in time, would have seen us either in the air or in an airport at this moment, unable to make arrangements or speak with the girls as easily as we could now, so if there can be any good thing about a moment like this, we should cling to that.

Amongst all this, I had nipped down to Fuel in the Dolphin’s lobby, their take-out food option and got some breakfast and coffee, mainly as I didn’t know what else to do.

Once all the calls we could make were done, we had no idea what to do with ourselves so we just went back to the pool again around 11.30. Louise cried pretty much all day and I felt like a fairly useless spare part, lying there in the sun, feeling like we shouldn’t but not wanting to sit in the room.

More calls were received and made during the afternoon and I handled as many of those as I could to prevent Louise from having to.

At around 5pm we went back to the room and had showers and got dressed. At some point during the day, I had looked for somewhere to eat this evening and just chose the closest thing I could find, The Yachtsman’s Steakhouse at the Yacht Club. We were booked in for 7.30.

We walked over there, the gorgeous surroundings feeling all the weirder at a time like this.

We arrived with a little time to spare so we went into the Crew’s Cup bar for a drink. Louise had red wine and I had a chocolate martini again.

On a day that probably called for it, we had a second round, this time I swapped to a beer.

We checked in next door at the restaurant at 7.25 and we were seated after a five-minute wait. It was odd to experience the world carrying on as normal, with the Cast Members doing their jobs and greeting us happily. We were served by Marty and during the meal, we chatted with the couple at the next table who were from Minnesota. They were frequent visitors too and it’s always nice to talk to other folks bitten by the bug and pick their brains about all the stuff you haven’t done yet.

We started with another lovely bread service.

I ordered the New York Strip.

Louise, the Filet Mignon.

We had creamed spinach and mushrooms as our sides.

We were too full for pudding, which was the second saddest thing to happen today.

We strolled back to the hotel slowly, soaking up the environment.

With some perfect timing, the Epcot fireworks started right at that moment and I took far too many photos of very poor quality.

You know I love this place and I lingered longer than was probably needed just to soak it in a little more. I always think about the horrid winter waiting for us back home and how I have to charge my batteries with the life force from this area just to get me through it.

We were back in the room and quickly asleep after a day we will never forget, full of all sorts of emotions. The next day would see us fly home.

Till the next time…..

The No Parks and Recreation Tour 2022 – Day Thirteen

by mkingdon, posted in The No Parks and Recreation Tour 2022

Saturday 1st October 2022

I heard a line in a film once, I can’t remember which film now, but it has really stuck with me ever since.

The line is something like, “The greatest lies a man tells are to himself”.

Never is this more true than when you swear you will not be eating breakfast the next day as you are so full after a huge meal that evening.

We were awake early and out of the room around 7.30 on the hunt for food.

The Dolphin has a buffet breakfast option at a place called The Market so only requiring a light start to the day we thought we’d go for an all-you-can-eat buffet, which makes perfect sense. As the law dictates we ordered coffee and juice and our server directed us to the food. Now, I do not wish to appear greedy or over-anxious to consume large amounts of food (again) but these buggers have their buffet set up behind a counter with someone plating up your food. This means that you have to ask them for everything you want on your plate and will discourage the multiple-trip eater from doing so for fear of being judged. Shame on you Dolphin, I have contacted Trading Standards.

My one and only plate looked like this.

How I was supposed to survive until lunch on this was a worry.

OK, there were two plates as this stuff was self-serve.

We paid the $65 bill and left. We are getting to some tricky ground now in this trip which is hard to write about. It was today that we started to understand that back home, Mary was very likely coming to the end. Louise was talking regularly to the care home in a nurse’s language that often needed translating for me.

Literally whilst she was on the phone with them I was standing staring at my phone trying to find any viable flight options to get us home earlier. With Hurricane Ian having just passed and the airports and flights having been shut down for three days, it was very slim pickings and any flight leaving earlier than our scheduled one took so many stops that it would only get us home a few hours earlier than we would anyway. It looked like we were here until our planned return in a couple of days’ time. All we could hope at this point was that Mary could hold on.

What I write here may seem glib and disrespectful in light of this situation but clearly, I am not going to burden you with the very serious conversations and feelings that were happening from here on in. I’ll concentrate on the food and the stuff we managed to do in between.

Back home, the girls were tag teaming being with their Grandma and we of course joined them via video whenever that was possible. We went to the pool to lie in a state of, well, I don’t know what state it was, but it felt surreal and not very nice.

At around 2pm our time, Rebecca called us from Mary’s bedside. Whilst she was clearly not in a good way, she absolutely responded to Louise’s voice and this was both uplifting and upsetting in equal measure. Whilst Louise did that I was making calls to the UK to try and arrange for a priest to go and see Mary who was a practising Catholic, as we knew from conversations with her, that she would want this.

Somehow I tracked someone down and like an actual angel, we saw him arrive in Rebecca’s phone that we were talking to her on within about twenty minutes. We will be forever grateful to him for that. We and Rebecca left him with Mary for a few minutes to do what needed to be done.

We just sat staring at the pool for the rest of the afternoon feeling helpless.

At around 5.30pm we went back to the room and changed. In our current dazed state, there had been zero thought given to dining plans so for ease we just walked on auto-pilot back to Il Mulino across the walkway from the Dolphin. We were seated after a ten-minute wait, at the same table as last night weirdly.

I had the same starter as it was fabulous and I didn’t think anything else could beat it.

Louise followed suit with a repeat of meatballs.

Tonight though we both went for the Rigatoni which was the cheesy pasta thing Louise had last night. It appears to have escaped my camera so just remember it from last night.

Tonight’s bill was $165 including tip which tells you how expensive my steak was last night.

We then just went back to our room and watched some TV before sleep.

Till the next time……

The No Parks and Recreation Tour 2022 – Day Twelve

by mkingdon, posted in The No Parks and Recreation Tour 2022

Friday 30th September

Another early rise which was a shock as we had been so active over the last few days!!

Some frantic phone checking was fruitless in the search for news of park reopenings at Universal. We were checking out today but if they were to open up we could still use a day of Front of Line to get Islands of Adventure done.

We got on with our packing hoping things would be clearer soon.

We like this hotel a lot, but frankly, at this point, we were both very much over the sight of the inside of this hotel room.

We were both showered and dressed by 8.30 and there was still nothing being said on any of the Universal social networks about the parks today so we had little choice but to check out and go and eat. We got a coffee from the market in the lobby and I paid a visit to reception to query a double charge on my credit card. At check-in, they had seemingly had issues trying to pre-auth my card for charging and had run it twice. Both times had worked it seemed.

I was reassured that would all be refunded automatically (we hadn’t charged anything) minus the frankly offensive parking charges and off I went. It may not astonish you to learn that neither charge was refunded and it took a good deal of faff, chasing and emailing to get that done once back home.

We left at 8.40ish and got the cases into the car before pointing it at Hash House a Go Go. If we couldn’t go and have some theme park fun we would go and eat dangerous amounts of calories instead. As we drove out of the hotel past the car park entrance for the theme parks we saw team members there with barricades up, preventing anyone from entering. This was as good a sign as any that they would be shut today. Why they could not put this out in an update seemed odd.

The car park looked empty and we were seated immediately.

There’s an unwritten rule that when having a ridiculous American breakfast you have to order two drinks, one hot and one cold so we did that in the shape of coffees and juices, mine Cranberry and Louise, Orange.

We both went for the French Toast.

It was magnificent and ridiculous all at the same time.

I just couldn’t fit those pieces of orange in though.

In the absence of any information from Universal, we decided to head to Disney Springs to get our gift shopping completed. The sat nav took us off the I4 a junction later than I might have chosen and we had an agonising ten-minute wait at some traffic lights waiting to U-Turn into Lime Garage. It was 10.10 and the queue to go through security was huge. Clearly, everyone was stir-crazy and with no parks to visit, here they were.

We started in World of Disney, which was unsurprisingly busy. We picked up a good number of gifts and moved on to the Co-Op Marketplace and Trend-D where more spending happened. Freddie’s latest obsession was Darth Vader so we got him a full costume. With Halloween approaching this would be his costume of choice for Trick or Treating in. Here is a glimpse into that future with Dougie taking on the role of Baby Yoda.

We walked all the way over to the M&M store for M&M addict Tom back home. Louise took a call from the care home and some family members who had been to see Mary. The juxtaposition of the blue skies and holiday activities versus what was going on back home was incredibly odd.

We were done shopping, so we walked back to Lime and pointed the car at the Dolphin, our final resort for this trip.

I self-parked and we checked in to find our room ready. We made our way up to room 1644W and dumped the cases and changed into pool attire. Our first impressions of the resort were very good.

I figured out where to get towels from and we did some hardcore relaxing by the pool, helped by a bucket of alcohol each.

We did very little until around 5pm when we went back to the room to get ready for dinner. Yes, we were hungry again despite that breakfast.

We were out by 7pm with no firm dinner plans. We wandered across to the Swan with nowhere in mind and stumbled across Il Mulino.

There was no wait to be seated and we were served by a chap called Howie, who was from the Wirral. Turns out he had done the Cultural Representative Programme about 18 years ago and never gone home, after marrying an American.

He looked after us excellently.

There was a phenomenal bread service to start, with some eggplant salad thing to dip stuff into. I appreciate this write-up is not one to trouble the food critics at The Times.

Louise started with Meat Balls.

I was busy devouring my starter, the Rice Balls, which was one of the best things to have ever been in my mouth.

You will already know that Louise had a “cheesy pasta thing”, but this one was exceptional.

If ever a photo did not do justice to a plate of food this next one is it.

I had the Tenderloin, which was not a condition for which CVS might supply an ointment, instead, probably the best steak I had ever eaten. It was stupidly expensive for a tightwad like me, but I really, really enjoyed it.

All in all, this was one of our best-ever meals in Florida. In all our years of visiting, this place had never once been on our radar and it goes to show that sometimes, despite all the planning and research, you just come across somewhere that is a delight. We would be back.

The bill was $205 including a good tip so this is not a cheap place to go, but as a treat, it was very much worth it.

Despite being fuller than a full thing, we soldiered on to Jellyrolls, resisting the huge temptation to just go to bed. We found an empty table, set up a tab and enjoyed the show. We hadn’t been for years and it was great to be back. We managed a very enjoyable hour before the desire to sleep was victorious. The last song we watched was If I Had A Million Dollars by Bare Naked Ladies, and if I did, I would eat at Il Mulino every night and then pop into Jellyrolls I think.

We even managed an episode of Dahmer back in the room before passing out.

Till the next time…..

The No Parks and Recreation Tour 2022 – Day Eleven

by mkingdon, posted in The No Parks and Recreation Tour 2022

Thursday 29th September

I imagine you were excited about returning this week to read about another day spent in our hotel room watching weather happen in real life and on our telly? Yep, this is the good stuff. Buckle up.

I was awake at 6am, keen not to miss any of the excitement today. Rebecca called and thankfully Dougie’s A&E visit resulted in him being OK and back home again on the mend.

After some weather on the TV, we went down to breakfast and this time we were doing it properly, buffet style in the restaurant there.

I didn’t take many photos of the wide variety of things I put into my body but I did capture this breakfast staple before it went down the hatch.

Suffice to say there were multiple trips along the buffet and we left very full. Again, it was not the best buffet we have ever had but it was the best one currently available to us so it had to do. The most offensive element was that items that ran out were left not refilled for long periods. Eggs and pancakes being the things missing from the selection for all our visit. This is a grave sin in the world of buffet.

We went back up to our room and felt inexplicably tired, so we dozed or a bit.

At some point later, (the days were merging into one never-ending hotel room experience) we got up and showered. With the worst of the weather having passed over us last night as we slept, we thought we’d get some fresh air and go for a walk around the hotel grounds.

We started out on the bridge near the entrance to get a feel for what conditions were like.

One of those windows was our room. Look, there’s nothing to write about so details like this matter!

Whilst our immediate area seemed to have escaped the worst of the hurricane, I am sad to tell you that Shania Twain did not make it.

Satisfied that death was not imminent, we had a walk around.

We found ourselves close to Sapphire Falls.

So we had a wander inside for a nosey. These hotels are huge. This was just one of the many conference rooms.

We found our way up to reception where a lot of people were hanging around. This is a random photo of some stairs there.

We bought some gifts for folks back home in the gift shop and just wandered around a bit. Outside the weather was still very wet and windy but not dangerous.

We went back to Royal Pacific and had a drink in the bar there.

With all other options exhausted, we went back to the room and got ready to go and find some food. Whilst Louise ran the hairdryer for about four days I spoke to Mum & Dad for a bit.

We headed down to Jake’s feeling peckish. There was absolute heartbreak as we were greeted with a two and half hour wait time for a table. Not having any desire to revisit the Islands Dining Room we were a little stumped for ideas as venturing out was still not an option.

In the end, we had to resort to the Market counter service place and we had a hot beef sandwich (not a lady’s medical condition) and a pizza. There were barely worthy of a photograph.

Feeling deprived of food-based loveliness, we went back to the Market, bought a lot of chocolate, and went back up to our room. All weathered out, instead, we watched some real crime documentary things for the evening and tried to find information on whether the Universal parks would be open tomorrow, but there was no info to be found. We fell asleep not knowing what we would be doing the following day other than packing and leaving to move over to the Dolphin.

Till the next time…..

The No Parks and Recreation Tour 2022 – Day Ten

by mkingdon, posted in The No Parks and Recreation Tour 2022

Wednesday 28th September 2022

This may not take long! Our activities today were severely curtailed by Ian.

I was awake at 6am and put the news on immediately to see what was happening. All the parks were closed today, so this was to be the way of things for the foreseeable. The worst of the weather had not reached us and we still had a good twelve hours or so until that would be the case, but of course, that did not mean the news channels would not spend every minute until then talking about it.

I nipped down to the Market in the lobby to get us some breakfast and I picked up some hugely over priced snacks for later on.

That was pretty much our day to be honest. Eating and watching reporters stand in bad weather in places we had never heard of.

Outside was looking like this.

To get a feel for our day today, imagine lying on your bed for many hours watching rolling news. Much time passed……

The worst of Ian was due to arrive overnight but by around 4.30, when I took this video, things were just beginning to turn nastyish.

Late in the afternoon I showered and got ready to find somewhere to eat. There are two restaurants at Royal Pacific and we did the other one last night so after a ten-minute wait, we had a table at the Islands Dining Room around 6pm.

Oddly the weather outside was still looking relatively OK saying that the entire state was petty much locked down.

Having spent all day in our room, clearly, we had gone a little stir-crazy as we somehow ordered a bottle of wine that cost $60. I suppose we had not spent any cash on anything else today.

To start we had

Me – Pot Stickers

Sure they look like something served in a bush tucker trial, but they were very tasty.

Louise had spring rolls

I continued with Street Noodles.

Louise had a sweet and sour chicken thing, which seemed very nice. She could not finish it and offered me the last piece of chicken. It was a large one, so I cut it in half only to find it was very much raw inside.

For those with delicate stomachs, look away now.

Louise was obviously concerned that she had eaten the rest of it and we feared impending illness but she was fine. I suspect this piece, being so much bigger than the rest had just not cooked, whilst the smaller ones had.

We, of course, told our server about the problem and he removed the item from our bill and apologised profusely.

With nothing else to do before getting back to the weather channel, I ordered a dessert. It was a coffee cake of sorts and was, to be frank disappointing.

This restaurant is not on our list of places to which we must return.

We headed back up to the room for more TV, and with the storm getting very close to us now we watched with more interest. We’d also heard from Rebecca around this time that Dougie (youngest Grandson) was in A&E and was not very well. This took precedence over the hurricane in our worry league table. Sleep came at some point to end an eventful yet uneventful day.

Till the next time…..

The No Parks and Recreation Tour 2022 – Day Nine

by mkingdon, posted in The No Parks and Recreation Tour 2022

Tuesday 27th September

After over two decades of family trips to Florida, you’d imagine that everyone in the Williams/Mkingdon tribe would understand the five-hour time difference by now. Rebecca ringing us at 6.30am local time did nothing to support that theory. Why yes, it was the first time this trip I had slept past 5.30am, why do you ask?

We spoke for a while, then dozed a little and got up and packed for our move to Universal. We were out of our room by 8 and undertook an unremarkable journey up the I4 to Royal Pacific. I self-parked, checked in and was delighted to find our room ready. Maybe a symptom of the incoming Ian that rooms were available at this early hour? We made our way to room 1247. We dumped the cases and walked out to the water taxi. We were met with no wait and a captain that looked a bit like Tom Hardy. No, I didn’t take a photo, he isn’t a piece of meat!

We chose to do Universal Studios today as we wanted to try the “new and improved” Mummy ride. Knowing that all our decisions work out perfectly, what could go wrong? This was one of the attractions not included in our Front of Line pass, so we thought we’d get this out of the way first before the queues built up. As we entered the park the app was saying it had a 15-minute wait, but that was just to get your locker! I hate the locker crap at Universal.

We made our way into and through the park and no, I cannot explain this photo.

There was, as the song goes, dancing in the street.

and people….

By the time we got to the ride, it had a 35-minute wait, but we figured it was still very much worth doing it now. We lockered our stuff and entered what was a very slow-moving queue. Eventually, we made our way up to the front of the queue and we could see the vehicles now, so we’d be on in just a minute.

The ride broke down.

I seethed considerably as we waited about 20 minutes with nothing happening and the team members encouraging everyone to leave. We waited them out and at around 9.55 we were the first to board the (hopefully) now-repaired ride.

Other than the queue taking you up some stairs now, I have to say I couldn’t determine any major changes to this ride. It’s been a while since we did it, so maybe I just have a bad memory. Anyway, it’s been an equally long time since it took me almost an hour to ride Mummy. (Obligatory joke whenever we do this ride.)

We left in need of breakfast and stopped at Starbucks for a coffee and sandwich. Yes, the ones in Magic Kingdom were very average but why would that stop us from having them again? We sat outside eating, people-watching and feeding the birds our average food.

With food onboard, we made our way over to Gringotts.

Imagine some fire in that photo. I couldn’t be bothered to wait for it.

Delightfully we had Front of Line here and we sailed past the extensive standby line so quickly that I didn’t take many photos of the back clerks etc. Even with our specialness, it took 15 minutes to get onto the ride.

This is a very impressive ride and I think I’ve done it a handful of times now. Not once have I ever heard or understood what the story is meant to be about. It does not reduce my enjoyment of it though.

Onwards to Men in Black now.

We were sat as a two on a row made for three. To prove that I am in no way overly competitive I picked up the spare gun and shot two-handed all the way around. I scored 140,000 but this could not prevent a loss for our car as my colleagues, were, let’s say shite. Not one of them in the front row of our vehicle scored over 10,000.

We wandered now round to the Simpsons Ride. Somehow Louise had never ridden this before.

Being September we were seeing the Horror Nights stuff throughout the park.

An enjoyable ride if not a little rough, again, no doubt a symptom of my now advanced years. We stopped in the shop to get Emily’s boyfriend a particular T-shirt he wanted before making our way over to Rip Ride Rockit.

This is a ride that I know is not going to be good for me, but I ride it regardless. For this one, you have to almost strip naked and deposit everything into a locker before entering through airport-style detectors. We boarded, and it is typically during the vertical climb to start this ride that the familiar feeling of regret rushes through me. The clenching that had to happen during that climb is enough to do me a mischief and that is followed by unprecedented screaming for the duration of the experience. It’s a violent ride but in a good way.

In need of a gentler experience, we headed for Fallon, using our Front of Line to bypass no queue whatsoever.

That is one of those photos that, if you look at it in a certain way, Jesus appears in it.

We paused for a drink at this point getting water and a beer from the cart outside of Fallon. We sat in the little garden there and rested a bit.

We were both feeling a bit weary at this point but we had to push on as Ian was coming and we had no clue what if any further time we may get in the parks over the next few days. So Transformers it was.

I stand by my summary of this ride from January. It is Spiderman with a different film and vehicle. Good though despite it being one of just too many of these simulator-style rides at Uni.

Appreciating the ability to sit down in it, the Horror Make-up Show was next on our list.

This is a little gem, please don’t miss it out of your Universal day.

Minions next (how good is having Front of Line?) and we were straight in.

We followed this with a sit down for five minutes, looking at weather apps and the skies. Then we planned to do the Bourne show but made the mistake of walking to it via some shops. Louise got distracted, bought some stuff and by the time we got to the show it was full. I did not mind at all. It’s not as if we have never seen it!

The next show wasn’t until 3.45 and the rain was about to arrive so we decided to get a water taxi back to the hotel and hunker down.

We waited ten minutes for a boat and once back in the room rested and watched the non-stop coverage of Ian.

Not wishing to venture out of the hotel I had booked Jakes Bar at 6pm for dinner. Not one we would choose in normal circumstances but at this point, we were grateful for it and the staff manning it, allowing us to eat.

We shared a Mediterranean platter to start.

We both then had the New York Steak.

We shared, well, Louise had at least one bite of, a cheesecake.

It was a pricey $180 including tip. We did have wines and beers too.

We shopped for some snacks for what might be an interesting day or two and were back up in the room by 8.30. I couldn’t figure out a way to cast my phone to the telly, so no Netflix tonight. We watched more news before going to sleep around 10.

Ian is coming!

Till the next time…..

The No Parks and Recreation Tour 2022 – Day Eight

by mkingdon, posted in The No Parks and Recreation Tour 2022

Monday 26th September

Two parks days on the trot, on a trip that was not supposed to include any WDW parks. Madness.

I was awake at my usual 5.30am and when 7am rolled around I was onto the app doing the required admin to have some fun. Cheers Chapek!

I secured a LL for Flights Of Passage and Genie+ for the day.

Around this time, after this vast expense, Louise informed me that she wasn’t feeling too well. After throwing objects around the room for a while in frustration, I left her in bed and wandered to the main building for some breakfast. I had some overnight oats and a coffee as my body is a temple. On my way to breakfast, I had taken a load of dirty washing (it was ours, not some random pile) and put them on to wash in the laundry.

On my way back to the room I stopped in to move everything over to the dryer. See, this is the sort of content you come here for. International laundry.

I went back to the room for an hour whilst that happened and Louise was up and dressed at least, but was in no shape to do a theme park. We would be having a much gentler day and you will be having slightly more boring content to read. Blame Louise. I was theme park ready at 5.30!

Despite being in no fit state to go to Animal Kingdom, Target it seemed was a different matter so we headed there. On our way there, the nursing home called about Mary who wasn’t doing too great and right about now we started to wonder if we may need to head home earlier than planned. The home assured us that was not the case for now so we went on with our day.

Target took another $100 off us for bits and we headed back to the resort pool. Somehow we found our way to a back entrance to POR, and we were promptly turned around as that was only for Cast Members we were politely told.

We did this for quite some time.

We chatted to folks back home via the internet, read, swam and relaxed trying not to think about the chunk of change I’d dropped on Flights Of Passage and Genie+.

Soon enough thoughts turned to eating and we failed to secure a booking for the Cheesecake Factory and didn’t want to risk the wait as it is always horrific. So instead, as this time we had no vegetarian Emily with us, we booked a table at the Outback.

We also had to pack for our move to Universal so we headed back to the room around 4.30 to do that and get ready. After showers and things we were out at 6.45 and headed to Formosa, our usual stomping ground on so many previous trips. The traffic was bad again, with it being a Monday and the back end of rush hour I suppose and we got there at 7.20 for our 7.30 booking. Look at us all early. I told you Louise wasn’t her normal self.

The Outback, it seemed was undergoing something of a facelift.

It would not, we hoped, affect their cooking abilities.

We were seated quickly and greeted with the excellent bread service that we had forgotten about. It had been a while since we’d been here.

That’s where it was, moments earlier.

We ordered –

Filet Mignon x 2.

Mine with a jacket spud….

Louise with mash….

The food was great, but bloody hell it was cold in the restaurant. I had come out in just a short-sleeved shirt and I was sat with two napkins over my arms to fight off hypothermia.

To help us warm up we onboarded more calories in the form of a rare dessert.

Carrot Cake for me

The Thunder from Down Under for Louise (not a euphemism)

To cap off this action-packed day we drove home and were in bed for 9pm. I worked out how to get Netflix on the telly and we managed one episode of Dahmer before sleep took us.

Till the next time…….