"A Tale of Two Cities" DC/Florida September 2016 - Day 10 (DS, Art Smith's Homecoming & WPE)

[soraia]

Day 9 is here.

"A Tale of Two Cities" DC/Florida
Day 10 - Monday 12th September 2016

I woke up at 02:00 and couldn't move my neck. Uh-oh.

I think a combination of the heat and tiredness meant that I must have slept in a funny way and the pain in my neck was unbearable. It had never happened to me before so I was a bit worried. I got up and took some nuromol. I had tried to be as quiet as possible (although I was wailing from the pain) and later when I told Kieren he said he had woken up and thought he could hear a seal but didn't know if he was dreaming or not I thought that was hilarious.

I had remembered that Tig had given me a cream to put on my achy feet which might help relieve muscle pain so I put some of that on my neck as well. After a few hours it did ease a little, thank goodness! It did take a good 2 days to clear completely though.

Today was a planned rest day which was definitely welcomed by all!

David & Thara had spent the weekend in Miami and were driving up to join us this evening so we were all really looking forward to seeing them

We all decided to head for the quiet pool this morning and it turned out to be a great idea. There was hardly anyone else around and we had a wonderful morning. I spent quite a while in the (super hot) hot tub which also helped my neck.

After that we wandered over to Disney Springs. It's a very pleasant 5 minute walk from Congress Park to Marketplace. The views are glorious!

Lunch was going to be a new one for all of us – Chef Art Smith's Homecoming. We all liked the sound of the menu – a bit of southern cooking, plus we had read that Chef Art Smith used to be Oprah's private chef. Hey – if it's good enough for Oprah, it's good enough for me!

We initially got a bit lost trying to find it as we hadn't been over to the new landing area of Disney Springs. We were going to explore after lunch. When we eventually found the restaurant, the area looked really nice.

I decided to order mac & cheese to start (it's normally a side but I asked for it to start which wasn't a problem) and this was a great decision – it's the best mac & cheese I have ever had! (and I LOVE cheese so I've had my fair share of mac & cheese...) I'm ashamed to say that I absolutely devoured this.

It did fill me up though so I dreaded to think about how I would fare with the rest of the (giant) meal!

I decided to go for the fried chicken and subbed the kale & collared greens for mashed potatoes. Bernie had the same but subbed his side for sweet potatoes. Kieren had the chicken & donuts and Tig had the fish of the day (grouper).

The food was AMAZING! I would 100% recommend and come back here again. The fried chicken was so moist and juicy (although Bernie mentioned his was a bit dry so maybe he got unlucky )
I was 100% stuffed already and we still had dessert to go. I should have just not ordered any but this was one of the ones I was most looking forward to so (foolishly) ordered some anyway. Dessert menu:

We decided to try a different dessert each so I went for the (highly anticipated) Hummingbird cake, Bernie went for the Shine cake, Kieren had the pecan pie and Tig had the chocolate cake.

The portions were just ridiculously big. It all tasted amazing but we were defeated after a few bites sadly. I actually got the rest of mine to go but never ended up eating it.

This was definitely a good use of 1 table service credit – portions were huge but all super tasty!

We definitely needed to walk it off after lunch though so we went for a wander around Disney Springs. We ventured into Uniqlo – they had a great selection of Disney shirts and the prices are very reasonable. The boys had clearly been rubbing off on me by this point as I ended up getting a Star Wars jumper!

We then went into the World of Disney store to collect our $100 gift card. After that we made our way over to Wetside and the Star Wars force was strong with this one...

We headed for an old favourite next – Disney Quest! I was glad to read it was still open as we all love it in there! We spent a good few hours at Disney Quest until we got a text from David & Thara saying they had arrived at SSR so we went over to meet them

Welcome David & Thara!

It was great to catch up with them and we heard all about their trip to Miami, which they loved.

We decided to head back to Disney Springs for dinner and walked over to Wolfgang Puck Express at Marketplace. I have really enjoyed it here in the past and think it's a great use of a CS credit!

I didn't make a note of what everyone ate (we were too excited to catch up with the newcomers ) but judging by the pictures – I had the meatball pizza, Bernie also had some sort of pizza, Kieren & Tig had salads and David & Thara had the chicken aioli sandwich.

For dessert we had frozen yogurt which was nice but I think we had been spoiled by Menchie's at City Walk which was phenomenal!

After dinner we went for another walk around and ended up in the Havaianas store where we all ended up buying some new flip flops. After that we found the Margarita stand and David, Thara & I indulged in some margaritas. I can't remember which ones we got but I remember them being very strong...

We decided to call it a night and got the boat from Westside over to Marketplace which is actually just on the bridge over to Congress Park so super convenient for us!

It was a great day and fab to welcome David & Thara.

Tomorrow we're all heading to Animal Kingdom

Thanks for reading!

Step count: 16,937

Day 11 is here.