Part Five
This section has barely any pictures, oops. Sorry guys!
So we left Hollywood Studios around 5 and took a boat over to Epcot. I got used to doing the walk between Epcot and Studios last summer when I went to Florida with my aunt, so I did suggest just walking so it didn't take so long, but Jey wasn't in the mood to - to be fair, we tend to call it the Death March. So boat it was! It was pretty full so we had to split up as we were some of the last people on the boat but we still managed to be near enough to each other.
When we got to Epcot the boat was empty. It seemed most people were going to the hotels for dinner because quite a few people kept asking how to get to Boardwalk faster while we were at the Swalphin.
We went right into the countries, past an Aurora-in-training, and just walked. It was nice and relaxing but right around Germany I started to get a bit light-headed. It was so crowded and we were going upstream of the rest of the crowd that it was triggering my anxiety without me really realizing it. I told Jey it was messing with my vertigo (which will make her worry way less) and asked if we could stop at the Refreshment Outpost to get some water since we were almost there. We sat at one of the tables and drank our water slowly, talking about where we'd like to eat for dinner but we couldn't really make any decisions so we decided to just keep walking until we found something since neither of us were particularly hungry (did you see the size of that sandwich?!).
Weird, random sidenote: while we were sitting there I saw the parents of a girl I knew growing up walk past. Epcot was like the place to be for random encounters with people from home for me this trip.
Anyway, after the water helped me relax a bit we continued on our walk around the countries. The crowd felt like it had thinned somewhat too so that was helpful. We reached Norway and Jey popped in to buy some Laila (which was my plan all trip but I ended up not being able to and now my bottle is woefully short on perfume. I'll have to get some from Nordstrom asap!) and then stopped.
We both were desperate to get something from Kringla and we knew neither of us really wanted to eat a big meal so we went in. There was only one other person in there when we first went in - a man around our age who was buying himself a sandwich and was asking about the aquavit shot. This was the conversation:
Guy: What do you have that's not beer?
Cashier: We have Aquavit. It's a shot.
Guy: Cool, can I try that? What's the best way to drink it?
Cashier: Quickly.
Guy: Does it taste good?
Cashier: .....yes.
Guy: Really? (he can see Jey and I turning blue in the face trying hard not to laugh at that gigantic lie)
Cashier: Well, you've proven yourself if you can drink it in one go and not gag in our country.
Guy:....great.
She was trying so hard not to make him feel too badly about buying the shot but it was written all over her face just how she felt about it. We weren't helping. Aquavit just reminds me of old Swedish parties guys. We chatted playfully with her about the poor man once we were at the register and we paid.
We always have semi-weird experiences in Kringla.
Anyway, our snack (and some more water) in hand, we sat down at one of the tables to eat.
What'd we get? School bread? Troll horn? Sandwich?
(omg look, a picture! Finally!)
Nah, we got lefse! Lefse is one of those weird snacks that I feel like you have to have grown up with in order to like. We've told people about our love for it before and their general reaction once they eat it is usually "how can you eat this?" If you've never followed one of my TRs before, lefse is the thing Jey and I always have to get in Disney World, and I was devastated (among other reasons) when my aunt wouldn't stop to let me get it last year.
What is it? Um, basically a potato flatbread that's cooked on a griddle. You put butter on it (and cinnamon if you're my mother) and roll it up and eat it It's basically like bread and butter. It's really bland. Jey and I adore it. But I do put a disclaimer here that we both grew up in homes where our mothers' sides were very traditional Swedish families.
So, grains of salt all around.
Anyway while we were eating, this lady and her male counterpart kept trying to take our food.
I don't normally mind ducks but Disney ducks are mean so I kept shooing her away. There was a larger party near us in the sitting area that was clearly into their cups. There was one woman who kept feeding the duck, calling her "my angel! My baby!" The duck bit her. Twice. She still fed it. This was the first time this trip we had to ask someone to stop feeding the ducks because it was affecting our snack. I really wasn't a fan of the duck jumping at me and trying to take my food out of my mouth.
We left and took pictures of the topiaries, vowing that the next day we'd actually do this in the other countries:
Then we headed toward the front of the park.
Jey was on a mission to get her mother a couple things for her car:
- A new Tinkerbell ornament
- Doom buggy decal
- Mickey decal
Her mother had just gotten a new car and when she transferred Tink the leg fell off and she couldn't save the decals we had bought in
Disneyland last summer so she asked if we could get them if we saw them. So we popped into Mousegears and looked around for them.
We found her the ornament but nothing else.
We had split up to look when an older CM came over to me. He complimented my Nick bow and asked me about it. Then he asked if I was too old to get Mickey stickers.
Um, dude, never too old.
He gave me some stickers and thanked me for the conversation. I was beaming from ear to ear.
I gave one to Jey when she returned and we skipped out of Mousegears. Thank you, old CM man, you made our night! I still smile when I think about it!
It was only about 8 but we decided we were ready to head back to the hotel and call it a night since the next night was EMH at Magic Kingdom and we were planning on going to stay up as late as we could for that.
There was a CM jokingly saying "see you tomorrow" to everyone so we told him that he would indeed see us tomorrow. He highfived us.
The trip back to the hotel was quick and easy. We headed back to our room and watched a little Stacy but since it was so early we went to see if there was anything we wanted to eat for a real dinner. Nothing appealed to either of us so we just filled our mugs with iced tea (J) and Powerade (me) then headed back to our room. We walked past the movie on the lawn.
It was Princess and the Frog.
We stopped and watched the end of the movie, standing awkwardly in the horse lane.
I just like this movie a lot, okay?
We showered and relaxed in the room for a bit, playing games and texting back and forth with our friend Liz chatting about what our plans were for Friday, then went to bed.