As I am writing this I am home sick. Our local grocery store had some sirloin steaks on sale so we bought some, ate them and now I'm feeling a little mad cowish so I am stuck at home-ish today.
Day 10
We awoke on day 10 to another beautiful day, so far it has been sunny every single day of our visit. Does Disney control the weather?
For all intensive purposes it's Xanadu down here!
Since today was a free day I was seriously contemplating finding a nice old couple to adopt my family so we could stay in Florida indefinately. I can live of turkey legs until the bird flu hits at least.
Afterall wouldn't they have some sympathy for me having to go back to a country full of mad cows?
I had forgot to mention that the night before in the marketplace we had stopped to look at a DVC booth and we were swarmed by two salespeople(ok we were approached not swarmed). Once they found out were Canadian they
couldn't say enough good things.
Why is it when people find out your from Canada they talk about 2 things, How cold it is and How beautiful it is.
Speaking to Americans everyday thats all I hear when they ask where I'm from. Yes we do get cold during the winter but we also get extreme heat in the summer, it gets so hot that you realize that asphalt has a liquid
state. As far as being beautiful, we don't have models walking around everywhere but I guess we have alot of nice trees.
The nice DVC people had arranged for us to get picked up the next morning and taken to Saratoga Springs for a visit at 9:00am. They had coffee and juice and muffins for you while you wait for your salesperson. We had a
real nice salesperson named Gil who brought us to a two bedroom and a grand villa. Now the Boardwalk villas are beautiful but they took that and improved on them even more for Saratoga Springs. The bathroom is actually
three sections now instead of two, the toilet is in it's own little room, the stand up shower and one sink is in it's own section and the whirlpool tub and the other sink is in another section. They also have an internet
hookup in everyroom which is really handy for people like me who can't live without internet, I think I could go without television before going without internet.
I did notice as we were driving up that there was no work being done on the latest phase of this development, it was 9am and the weather couldn't have been better so not sure why no one was working?
I felt kind of bad going to this open house knowing we wouldn't be buying but I thought we were spending thousands on the trip anyway so that made me feel not as guilty.
The best part of the whole tour was there was no pressure at all to buy anything. They let the point system speak for themselves and it is a really great deal if you have that kind of cash hanging around which
unfortunately I don't unless I sold a kidney and if you've been reading my reports you know one kidney is reserved for my sister if she ever needs
one.
We get back to Boardwalk and I was anxious to do something, anything. I was very tempted to go to Cape Canaveral but Kelly and Kate didn't seem very enthused on that idea. Kate was already in the hottub by this time so I went down and told her we were going for a drive and she could come with us or stay here. She knew that there was the possibility of a restaurant visit on our journey so she jumped out of the hottub to come with us.
During the whole trip I would get a weird feeling whenever i left the World. It felt like we were entering back into the real world when we left
Disney and I didn't want to be in the real world, I wanted my fantasy Disneyworld where everything was perfect. I'll probably end up being a hermit when I get older. I'll be the weird guy(not uni-bomber weird)
where if balls land in my yard from kids they become mine and no kids better come near my house to get the ball back.
We stopped at this outlet mall place called
Premium
Outlets
Since my reeboks had been eaten alive I thought I would get a new pair of shoes and this outlet place had a Nike outlet. We parked the vehicle and Kelly and Kate headed towards the Gap and me towards Nike. I said whoever
is done first will meet in front of the other store.
Nike was packed and a pretty big store so i was in there probably 25 minutes before I found the shoes I wanted. I bought them and headed outside and no sign of the girls. I headed over to the Gap and parked myself on a bench out front to wait for them. I waited and waited and waited....they don't come. The heat was brutal. I would have layed on the bench but I probably would have started to cook. I look back towards Nike thinking maybe I missed them but they aren't there.
I don't want to go in the Gap since I had a big shoe box from Nike and I hate going into store with bags, the employees always look at you as being suspicious or something so I just don't do it. I have the beginnings of OCD.
I decide to move the van to a better location as we were parked way out of the way. As I was driving around I finally found them and they dropped off their goods into the van and i parked in a prime parking spot.
Now i should mention Kelly really doesn't buy alot for herself ever so for her to buy more than one thing was a festivus miracle. I'm not sure of everything she bought but it was all pink and there was lots, thats all i know, i did take a picture though
We then continued through this outlet place and there where lots of great stores to choose from but i knew since Kelly had bought a bunch of stuff at the Gap she was done shopping, she's a binge shopper. I stopped at
Timberland and found a great pair of shoes I wanted but I had already got the Nike's so I was in a quandary, keep them both, return the nike's? What to do?
I should also mention i don't return things, I never have. I don't know why I don't return things but I just don't. I convinced Kelly to return the shoes for me, thank god I have someone like her in my life.
I then got to purchase my Timberlands and I was happy!!
I did do some research on these new shoes and they pass NAFES (National Association For Escalator Safety).
OK Nafes is made up but it sounds better than the real name "The American Society of Mechanical Engineers/American National Standards Institute
Escalator Committee" I swear to you that this is real.
Now since my near death experience yesterday i have been doing alot of research on escalator safety and believe it or not thousands of people get injured on escalators every year, it's hard to believe but it happens.
It's usually the same people that have pop machines fall on them as well.
After our shopping excursion we headed to Red Lobster for lunch. We love Red Lobster, we don't live near one so anytime we go anywhere we have to eat there.
Again we found a difference between the same chain in different countries.
In Canada we have one kind of ice tea on the Red Lobster menu, in the US you have 2 kinds, sweetened and unsweetened. We ordered the sweetened kind because we figured the unsweetned would taste just like regular tea but cold. The sweetened tea tasted like swamp water, it was horrible.
Kate ended up putting sweetener in her's which the attentive waiter recognized and then the next round was the normal ice tea we were accustomed too. Note to self, leave good tip for waiter.
I can't believe how little tax Americans pay. Our bill was just over $40 and there was only $2.63 in tax, in Canada there would have been over $6 in tax. I guess thats why we have free health care, it's not really free but we pay an exorbitant amount of tax to pay for it.
After leaving Red Lobster we just drove along International Drive and I stumbled upon this building.
No idea what it is but I thought it looked cool and I was getting close to the 500 picture mark for our trip and was trying to reach that goal so this building is fair game.
By this time there was a bit of melancholy setting in with the inevitable departure from Disney in less than 48 hours.
We headed back to our villa
Kate beelined it back to the hottub and it's about 3:25pm so we won't see her until she's hungry again.
It's now 3:28pm, Kate is rummaging through the fridge. Somethings never change.
This is the first day I have actually just sat on the balcony with a cold brewsky and admired our surroundings. We had been going so much I never
took the time to smell the roses so to speak. I can't get the thought out of my head knowing we are leaving in less than 48 hours. Where did all the time go??
I'd spent hundreds of hours in research and spent months anticipating this trip and here it is almost over.
I decided I wanted to check out the nightlife on Boardwalk, we've been too tired at night to do anything late so we thought we try tonight.
We walked around a bit first and walked by the clown pool which had 2 lifeguards and no swimmers. I was going to throw myself into the pool and sink to the bottom to give those guys something to do but my wallet had been wet enough on my trip.
We went to the Boardwalk at around 9pm I guess, i know it's still early but Kelly wouldn't stay up late enough to go when there was alot of people around. We went to the Atlantic Dance Hall. We were the only people in
there other than the bartender and doorguy. It's looks like it could be a really fun place when it's full.
We only stayed for one drink, I really wanted to go to Jellyrolls but Kelly didn't want too. I think it was the cover charge that made up her mind, she can be so cheap sometimes.
This is as close as Kelly got to going into Jellyrolls. This picture was taken a few days earlier.
We made our usual "Is our cat still alive?" phone call home and headed to bed for the night.
We have one more full day left at Disney and we chose to do MGM on our last day because I wanted the Disney experience to end with Fantasmic.
Stay tuned for Day 11 at MGM
The exact same thing happened to me when I was about 12 years old. I was in Washington DC at some museum and the escalator grabbed my shoe-I did the same as you and pulled my foot out in a nanosecond. I then just walked away and left my shoe-I was 12, need I say more, lol. The problem was it was January in Washington. I almost lost my foot to frostbite but at least I didn't make a scene 
