PART TEN:
After the safari, the night was still young!
We were taken back to Jambo House and inside to Jiko. The animal guides bid us farewell, and we were taken to a large table to sit as a group for our family-style Jiko meal.
You must forgive me, but we didnt get any pictures at dinner for this one. Just because we were seated with so many other people - people we were just getting to know - and didnt know how theyd feel about us taking pictures of the entrees before any one was allowed to touch them. Im sure you understand.
Lets just say that the food was almost as amazing as being around all those animals.
They started us with a bread course - all kinds of breads and dips. Kind of similar to what we had when we ate at Sanaa. This course was paired with a white wine. It was all very tasty.
Then they brought out the appetizer course. Each course was brought out on several large plates put in to the middle of the table for everyone to take from.
We started to get to know the people around us. (Wine always helps to open me up and break any shyness I might be fighting!
)
Across from us was a family from the Pacific Northwest. The couple had their son with them who brought his friend along. The boys had just graduated high school, and this was the big trip they were taking I guess. The couple and the son had never been to Disney, but the friend had been on a couple trips, so at least they werent flying blind. (Like I said in a previous post, I always wonder how overwhelming the Disney experience must be for a first timer. You dont ever have that feeling if youve been going since childhood.) They were very nice people and we talked with all four of them quite a bit.
Kind of silly, but one of the things I found very interesting was that they said there werent many Italian restaurants where they lived, so they really enjoyed going to the restaurant in Italy in Epcot. Weve actually never been there, since here in southeastern PA, every small town has at least five Italian restaurants and all the big area cities have Italian neighborhoods where you can get any kind of authentic Italian food you could ever desire. We figure we can get Italian any day of the week here, so we never get it down in Disney. I guess I just took for granted that every town has a bunch of Italian restaurants - boy was I wrong!
We also chatted with a woman to my left side who was down visiting her granddaughter. (I think Im remembering that correctly....) But shes from Jersey, so not far from us!
For our entrees, they brought out a fish dish, a chicken dish, and the famous filet mignon dish. It was paired with a red wine. Again, the food was just so good. I cant emphasize enough what a wonderful restaurant Jiko is. Truly.
Our meal was finished with dessert. They served the pistachio creme brulee and the lemon curd, and maybe something else? Sorry, the memorys getting a little hazy. They also served us a very sweet dessert wine. I quite liked it. Brian thought it was too sweet. (pshaw!) But what can I say, I like sweet, girly drinks of any kind!
After all that sweating we did out on the savanah, then being served so much wine right in a row, lets just say that I left dinner feeling a little tipsy!
We bid our new friends a farewell and headed back up to our room to get ready to head out to Downtown Disney!
My goal at DTD was to head out to the new store that I read about in one of the DVC magazines. They said something about this store having vintage Disney shirts. I was intrigued......
Well, long story short, the new store was a bit of a let down. They had all the same stuff as the other stores, plus a FEW other things. I didnt see any kind of good vintage tees. Im picky about my Ts too. I like fitted girly tees. Nothing big and baggy and no really thick fabric. I sweat too much for that. I like thin fitted girly tees and I so desperately wanted something very vintage-y looking. Sadly, no luck that night.
I always like to have my picture taken with the skeleton pirate outside the World of
Disney store, and this trip was no exception!
We ended up getting a few gifts for the folks back home. We got princess pillows for my nieces
- one Cinderella and one Belle. (Lilli -the four year old- picked Cinderella and let her little sis have Belle.)
Overall, we were getting pretty tired. Didnt really take too many more pictures. Again, how many pictures of the
Lego sea monster can one person have in their collection? We did snap this self portrait before we headed back towards the buses.
And this of the new T-Rex restaurant:
We ended up back at AKV around midnight and headed right to bed for some much needed rest!
I have to admit, I haven't had as much time in the last couple weeks to work on it - I'm really busy getting my CD done and gearing up for the two shows I have this fall. 
There's still so much to do and NOT alot of time to do it. I need to have this released by the end of October, and I'm beginning to freak out!
(And Magic Flute goes up the second week of November.) 
