Heading into the Sunset Day 14 - Spirit of the Swamp, More Shopping and Red Lobster

[MrsBC]

Weather today - very cloudy and cooler, but dry.

This morning we needed to be in the cars by 8am as we had a 9am airboat tour on Spirit of the Swamp, so I had my bossy head on trying to round them all up, handing out pastries on the go, and making sure I had everything I needed for the day. I clearly remember saying 'you will need jackets with you'. It was like trying to herd cats!
We actually drove away from the villa at 8.10 so we did well, and managing not to get lost, we got to Lake Tohopekaliga in good time to meet Cap'n Andy. After a quick 'rest room' visit we boarded the airboat and put our headphones on - 2 of us felt they didn't need jackets so had left them behind! We had the best tour yet, during our 90 (plus) minutes we saw lots of wildlife, birds, a tree that looked like stalagmites, and lots of small alligators. We also saw an 8' one and two 12 - 14' ones; one of them swam ahead of us slowly for a few minutes before disappearing into the reeds. This is when you wish the airboats had sides! It was quite cool on the water as there was no sun at all this morning. Everyone really loved it, but 2 of us were cooler than we wanted to be ;-)

When we returned to the cars, we split up - us to go shopping, and David, Jo and Jack to go back to Universal. We were meeting later for dinner.

We headed for Vineland Premium and got parked easier today. We were hungry by this time so decided on an early lunch at the Chinese again where we had combo meals for $6.99 - lovely, and we were now ready to hit the shops.
We weren't looking for anything in particular this time, though Helen managed to bag more Converse bargains, and we just had a general wander about. Among other things I bought some brooches in the Swarovski shop for $13 each down from $65, lovely for birthday gifts etc; lots of bits in the Vera Bradley shop which were all an extra 50% off the outlet price - bags for $20, flip flops for $5 and more. The Disney store had plenty of bargains in too, but one caught our eye - Russ had bought a shirt at HS a couple of days before, it was $50 ... yet here it was at the outlet for $20. (We had seen a few of the things we bought at the outlets earlier in the hol, on sale for the full price in the parks too). He was really mad, and we decided to buy it, and return the full price one. We were all shopped out by now, and starting to think of suitcase space! so we drove back to the villa for some pool time, well in my case sitting near the pool with a book and a Strawberita.

We hadn't been there long when our other half turned up, ready for a rest and we had a chat about our afternoon; they had done all the big coasters again at US; until our stomachs started rumbling, so we got changed and drove the few minutes to the Red Lobster at Formosa Gardens, another first for me, Helen and Russ. It was buzzing but we got a table straight away and were soon digging into the cheesey biscuits. - mmmm, and then another basket came with our drinks! I had a Bahama Mama, very nice too, and the others had Coronas. We had done the usual 2 separate orders ( this worked very well for us, and made settling bills really easy), so between us three we had Salmon, Honey BBQ shrimp and chicken, and Seaside Shrimp Trio. Oh how I regretted all those biscuits! We couldn't manage a dessert each, so Russ and I shared a Chocolate Wave and Helen had a liqueur coffee. Our bill was $92 + tip. Joanne got talking to the people on the next table who heard her Glaswegian accent; they had moved to Orlando several years ago and were entertaining friends who were visiting, we said they could entertain us anytime :-).

How we walked to the car I don't know, we were stuffed and all ready for our PJs, so that's what we did, got comfy and watched tv for a while before bed, none of us could believe it's nearly the last full day of our holiday!