Saturday Night:
Saturday Night??
(All right, who remembers the
Bay City Rollers?? Sing it with me, now!)
...on Saturday night, Saturday night!
Aye, aye, aye, aye
I just can't wait!
Aye, aye, aye, aye
I got a daaaayt!!
Okay, sorry for the little side trip back to the seventies! It’s just that as I typed that, the song instantly popped into my head and now I can’t get it out.
Don’t be surprised if you find yourself singing it later….
Bwaah Ha Ha Ha!!
Well, it did feel really good to be going out on an
actual date with my hubby. When you work days and your DH works nights (and every other weekend, too), and you have kids (one of whom is autistic), I’m afraid that Saturday night dates become fewer and farther apart with each passing year. My cold was practically gone and I was looking forward to our night out with dinner and a show.
Make that a show and then dinner. I planned for us to eat after the 6pm performance of
La Nouba, primarily because of Ed’s preoccupation with not being late. I didn’t want to have to wait around for a half hour to be seated, rush through dinner with him getting all uptight about making it to the theater; and then having to sit through a ninety-minute show with intense heartburn!
Date night was too precious to risk that!
The other thing I like about eating after a show or a movie is that it gives you a chance to talk about it over dinner. The only problem with my plan was that I was starting to get a bit hungry. Well, why not? It was 5pm and we had last eaten about 6-1/2 hours ago. One thing I’d noticed about this weekend was that our sleeping and eating schedules had been completely thrown off!
I remember thinking, “I’m so glad the kids aren’t here,” and then getting hit with a severe pang of Mommy-guilt! I decided that, as soon as we got out of there, I would phone home.
Ed appeared and we walked outside and down a path toward the boat dock, hand in hand. Normally, we would have just strolled across the walkway to
Downtown Disney, but we were both a bit tired and Ed had certainly had enough exercise for one day! Besides, a little boat ride at sunset felt more romantic. As we walked along, I noticed that the landscaping around the resort had really matured since the last time we were here and the grounds were really quite pretty and serene. The fragrance of the surrounding flowering shrubs filled the air and the evening was warm and pleasant.
Ed had enjoyed his massage and, as I had predicted, had followed it up with time in both the whirlpool tub and the steam room. Since I was feeling quite good now, I kept the less
magical details of my encounter with Brutus the Heavy Handed to myself. We arrived at the dock and were alone for a few moments until a small watercraft buzzed up to the dock and parked off to one side. It was the skipper, just coming onto his shift. Ed struck up a conversation with the CM while I eased my conscience with a call home and had a nice little chat with Tricia and Billy. Well, you can’t really chat with Billy, but he gets his message across:
“Mommy!! Mom, Mom, Mommy! I want a Mommy, please!”
Ughhh. Shot through the heart!
Fortunately, he also wanted to get back to his dinner, so he didn’t stay on too long. Everything there was fine, so after Ed spoke briefly to Tricia, we ended the call. The boat was pulling up to the dock.
The fresh skipper took charge of the boat and soon we were headed out across the lake to Downtown Disney. We probably would have arrived sooner had we walked; the boat docked first at the Marketplace and then at West Side. But, we had the time and it was a lovely little ride. The sun was setting and although I consistently tend to forget that I am carrying a camera, the scene was so pretty that I was moved to fish it out of my bag and get a shot of the theater as we approached it from the water.
This was to be our first time seeing a performance of
Cirque du Soleil, and I was really looking forward to it! We joined the throngs that were entering the theater and found our seats. I now regret not purchasing a program because it would really help me to remember a lot of the details of the show. But at the time, my priorities led me to choose a small bucket of popcorn and a Sprite instead!
Equally expensive, but the cost was justified when, later that winter, the souvie popcorn bucket was recycled by the kids, who used it to make a snow fort.
Well, there was no photography allowed, naturally, but here’s a copy of the seating plan (courtesy of PassPorter WDW).
We were right in the middle of the
purple section 204, directly behind the sound and lights guys. They were really great seats, perfect views of everything high and low! Plus, there was the added bonus of having a little ledge on the rail right in front so we had a place to put our cups!
As guests were still being seated prior to the performance, two clown characters moved through the audience and did a few pantomime sketches to entertain us. One of the funniest bits came when one clown was walking down an aisle toward the stage and stopped dead in his tracks when he came to a gentleman with a rather shiny bald head who was seated on the end of the aisle, just a few rows ahead. Since the house lights were still up, they reflected brightly off the man’s head and the clown put his arms up to shield his eyes from the blinding light. The upper tiers of the audience rocked with laughter. The man had no idea, because this was all going on behind him, and it was really funny. He may have been planted in the audience; I really don’t know. But it seemed to be very impromptu and, if he wasn’t a plant and was just a hapless guest, he never gave any indication that he knew he was the inspiration for all the laughter.
I cannot even begin to describe the show, so I won’t even try. All I can say is that it kept us completely in awe for ninety minutes and the time just flew by. My favorite act was the young girls doing tricks with the giant yo-yo things. Ed really liked the extreme bike riders. And, of course, the trampoline finale just needs to be seen in order to be believed!
I highly recommend it, but I’m very glad we decided to do this without the kids. Tricia, age11, would probably have enjoyed most of it, but some parts were a little dark and surreal. I don’t think that Billy, age 9, would have been able to sit through the entire show, especially given all his autistic symptoms. It could be very over-stimulating.
It’s definitely not for very little ones, that’s for sure.
We exited the theater and took a leisurely stroll over to
Pleasure Islandand
Raglan Road.
(Wow, that came out blurry. Ed looks a lot more handsome on our own computer!)
Last year, Ed and I stopped in here one night for a drink, but this would be our first meal here at the pub/restaurant. There was a l-o-n-g line to check in and, although we were about a half-hour early for our ADR, we got on the end of it and eventually made it up to the podium. The place was packed, but then again, what did we expect? It was Saturday night, after all!
Uh Oh!! Here come those Bay City Rollers again!!
S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y Hey!
S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y Hey!
(They should get together and have a reunion concert. They could play with Off Kilter, don’t you think? Can you wear a long tartan scarf with a kilt?)
We took our pager and squeezed our way inside, slowly inching our way past the four (!) bars and over toward the area where the house band was playing. I like how they play a mix of traditional and new Irish songs; some of the traditional songs I can remember from my parents’ old records (i.e. Paddy Noonan / Carmel Quinn / The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem). They bring back a lot of fun memories of those great old family parties when I was little. I found myself singing along to a few of them. (And it’s impossible to listen to Irish music without tapping your feet!)
A waitress came by and we each ordered a
Murphy's Irish Red. (Sorry,
Guinness fans, that brew is just too dark for my taste!) We stood and enjoyed the music and, intermittently, the traditional Irish step dancing while we nursed our beers for what seemed to be a very long time. I asked the waitress for a menu and we each decided what we were going to order. It passed some of the time, but now my mouth was really watering! I tried to distract myself by studying the pictures on the wall and the “authentic” décor for what seemed to be a very long time. Then I thought I might pass some more time with a trip to the ladies’ room, but when I returned, we were still waiting!
My tummy was rumbling so loudly that I was glad no one could hear it over the band! I didn’t dare have another beer on an empty stomach because I’ve become such a lightweight in recent years, I was afraid it would put me right to sleep, standing up!
ssst: Don’t you even start with me, Buzz!) And poor Ed, he really needed to sit down… his legs and feet were so tired. The entertainment was great, but we were fading fast!
Finally, at about nine o’clock, our pager lit up and we were led to a room off the back. There was a huge party of about twenty or so people sitting around a few tables that had all been pushed together in the center of the room….and then there was our cozy little table for two by the unlit brick fireplace. We each sat down in an overstuffed leather wing chair. Ahhhhh! It felt so good to sit! And what seats! We joked that we felt like royalty. The waitress appeared immediately.
“How are you both tonight?” she asked with a slight lilt in her voice.
“Starving!” we answered simultaneously.
Ed told her a little about running the half-marathon earlier.
rolleyes1 Honestly, he reminded me of a woman who just can't help herself from telling the story of her recent labor and delivery over and over again to anyone who will listen!) Ah well, kudos to you, honey! Heaven knows I couldn’t have done it!
Having had
more than enough time to decide what we wanted to eat, we were ready with our orders right away, so she took back the menus and disappeared off toward the kitchen. I sat back in the inviting comfort of the gigantic chair and rested my head against one of the wings. We must have both closed our eyes for a bit, because suddenly, our waitress was back and telling us to wake up! Our food was here!
We had both decided that because of the late hour, we would cut right to the chase and just order a main course, no appetizers. If we were still hungry, we could always have desert! The words of my Irish grandmother rang in my ears, “Hunger makes the best sauce!” she would say to us when we were little and wanted a snack before dinner.
I think that was her own secret to keeping her children content with their food, because she was probably the worst cook I have ever known, God rest her! If she let them get hungry enough, anything she put in front of them would taste better! I just seem to remember that she prepared most food by boiling it and used way, way, too much salt on everything.
I could never understand why, when she cooked bacon, she would open the package and just plop the entire thing right in the pan without separating the slices! Must be the way they cooked bacon back in Ireland...
Anyway,
this Irish cooking in no way reminded me of my dear Nanny’s. I had the
"Pie in the Sky"- chicken and wild mushroom pie served with a rocket lettuce salad. Yum. Ed dug into
"Kevin's Heavenly Ham"- the chef’s signature dish. Oven-roasted loin of ham with an Irish Mist glaze served with braised cabbage and mashed potatoes. Double yum! Needless to say, we scarfed down every bite! Hunger really is the best sauce!
When we had finished the meal, we decided that we were just too tired to stay out even one minute more, so we sleepily took care of our bill and left. I’ll say one thing, we did have to wait an inordinately long time for a table but, once we were seated, the service was very efficient and quick. We were served our dinner almost immediately and did not have to wait around forever for the check.
We cruised on over to the resort bus stop and it didn’t take too long for our bus to show up. I think we both dozed in the nice, dark bus on the ride back to the Swan! The harsh lights came on again and, somehow, we pulled ourselves together and dragged our weary bodies back up to our room and crashed for the night.
How good it felt not to have to set the alarm!
Tomorrow: MK Lite: 2 (the sequel)
Kathy
But I'm in the camp of needing to have a tidy house before I'd ever let some stranger in to tidy my house! Not that I could ever actually do that.
I think if I cleaned houses for a living, I would still hire mine cleaned every once in awhile.
Of course, the fact that there was a small flood downstairs in the women’s lounge area probably didn’t help my first impression! Maintenance men were working on the problem and a manager was there to smooth things over with the guests, but it was a bit distracting to be changing into robe and slippers while a bunch of men were banging and clanking at the plumbing! 
Then, I stopped smiling. “Now, move away from the uterus before you get a kick in the face!” I don't think he could tell whether I was kidding him or not.
I yawned and stretched.
You should be writing your own column. I was laughing out loud. My DH thinks I slipped a cog-"What's so funny on those disboards"? he asks. I have to make him sit down and read this, than he will understand.
Wow!
