Day 8 - Part 5
We left the store in Japan with a couple of new pearl rings for the girls, and walked out into the courtyard. I noticed a Photopass photographer out there and suggested that we stop for a few pictures since we were getting a Photopass cd but hadn’t taken a lot of pictures on this trip yet. (We ended up taking a lot fewer pictures than the year before.)
He started off by having us pose in front of the pagoda. Here’s one with my camera.
Okay, that sun is bright!
And then a few from Photopass.
Okay, that sun is
really bright! And my reverse-blink trick isn’t working at all.
James tries looking through just one eye.
The confused look on our faces is us wondering when our retinas will work again.
Ow, it was just too painful.
Since we were having so much trouble with the sun in our eyes, the photographer suggested that we move over in front of the torii.
But, it didn’t matter a whole lot. Somehow no matter where you stood, that sun was just brutal.
You can see the strained attempts by Judy and Lauren to keep their eyes open for the picture.
We thanked the photographer even though we knew that none of those pictures would be “keepers”, and kept moving around the World Showcase.
We walked past the American pavilion, since we had stopped for Voices of Liberty earlier. And, we just kind of zipped past Italy also. I took this picture as we went by, although I’m not sure why. It seems to be of nothing in particular.
We stopped to look at Germany’s model train for a little bit. Hey, there goes James.
I took a couple of pictures of James in front of the model train.
I saw another pay phone right outside the bathrooms in Germany. (This photo is borrowed from Jordan’s thread. I noticed that it shows the telephone I’m referring to, and I don’t have a picture of it.) These bathrooms are just to the left of the model train, if you’re facing Germany from the middle of the lake. And if you are facing Germany from the middle of the lake, make sure you move before Illuminations starts.
I put the number into my contact list, but we weren’t in the mood for a prank call at the moment -- everyone was hungry and preferred to look for some food. We’d had a late breakfast in the suite, and it was filling, but it was now almost 2:30. A Grey Goose Slushie and carrot sticks only go so far, ya know. But, on the other hand, we had a big dinner planned for this evening, so we didn’t want to eat too much. I knew that we could get some bratwurst from the stand located at the entryway to Biergarten, but the rest of my clan wasn’t feeling it. They wanted to keep looking, so we continued on to China.
We stopped in the Temple of Heaven so that Marlene and I could show the others the terra cotta warriors, but I guess I didn’t take any pictures this time around. When we came out, Judy noticed the Lotus Blossom Café and went in to see what they had. She found some things on the menu she liked, and James did too, but I was thinking, “Hey, I’m only one country away from…school bread!” I said that I was going to wait until we got to Norway, and go to Kringla Bakeri, and the girls said that they wanted to get their food there too. Since there were three of us, we decided to go ahead now, get our food in Norway, and come back here to the tables in Lotus Blossom. A lot of hoofin’, but we could handle it.
Here’s what Judy and James’ got at the Lotus Blossom Café: sesame chicken salad (at the top of the picture), egg rolls, and orange chicken (at the bottom of the picture).
They liked both of these dishes.
When the girls and I got to Kringla Bakeri, we looked over the food choices while in line. Lauren saw a ham and apple sandwich and thought that it sounded good, so that’s what she got. Marlene went for a berry cream puff. Of course, I had decided long before that I’d get the school bread. We quickly booked back to Lotus Blossom to find Judy and James about half-done with their food.
Here’s the food the girls and I got from Kringla Bakeri: my school bread, Marlene’s berry cream puff, and Lauren’s ham and apple sandwich at the bottom.
Well, apparently ham and apple sounds like an interesting pairing, but Lauren didn’t like her sandwich very well.

In fact, she was sorry that she’d ordered it and didn’t finish it. (Don’t worry -- the rest of us shared with her so that she didn’t starve.) Marlene loved her berry cream puff and I liked the school bread. I can’t say that it lived up to the heights of delectability that I imagined from the reports on the DIS, but it was really good. (Yes, the heights of delectability that I can imagine are pretty darned high.) Also, I thought that it’d be bigger.
We spent about 20 minutes eating and giving our feet a rest. Judy said that she was starting to feel really hot and needed to get out of the park.
So, it was time to make a break for the bus stop.
As we left Lotus Blossom, the acrobats were performing. I paused just long enough to take a couple of pictures.
When we got around past Mexico and were approaching Future World, there was a cast member trying to squeegee a big puddle of water into a drain. He had some cones set up to keep people from walking through where he was working, but people kept walking through, completely oblivious. It was kind of funny to watch because he was starting to get really irritated and would stop squeegee-ing to tell people to walk around. I guess it’s true in every job…no matter how fast you squeegee, people are always trying to walk through your puddle.
I think we stopped in Club Cool, as a half-way point on our trip to the bus stop, just so Judy could get out of the heat for a couple of minutes. She was really getting overheated, to the point where we probably should have thought about going to Medical, but who wants to do that? Come to think of it, I think we stopped at the restrooms just before the exits as well. This just reinforces how unbearably hot it was during this trip, which I haven’t stressed that much, other than in the title. It was really, really hot!
But don’t worry; there was no trip to Medical or anything as serious as that. We made it to the bus stop and were soon on our way back to Kidani.
All in all, we’d had a wonderful day touring the World Showcase. I’m tempted to say “best day ever”, but when I think of the others, how can I compare? It was definitely…
one of…the best days ever! (And it wasn’t over yet!)
Up next: The Calm before the Hoop
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