“Let’s skip the parks today!”

When we woke up we thought about getting up for a minute,  and actually got up to put the “Do Not Disturb” sign outside the door and went back to bed to go back to sleep. When we finally woke up we watched part of Ted Kennedy’s funeral and finally left the hotel a little after 11am. We decided to skip breakfast and find a place to have an early lunch instead.

Since we had thought about trying Olive Garden this is where we went. Tom programmed it into the GPS and off we went. About 10 minutes later we walked into the restaurant. A very nice greeter showed us to our table, a comfy booth and handed us the menus. It didn’t take long for our waiter to appear and take our drinks orders. When he returned with our drinks we were ready to order appetizers. Since we were hungry we decided to order the Create a Sampler Italiano, calamari, fried mozzarella and toasted beef and pork ravioli. A few minutes later a huge plate arrived and it was a really wonderful selection which came with two dipping sauces. Right after we had finished our starter our waiter came by and brought out the salad and rolls.  Maybe one should read the menu to realize that the entrees came with salad! But it looked tempting with lots of freshly grated parmesan cheese, so we dug in.

A little later our main courses arrived. Tom had the Chianti Braised Short Ribs, tender boneless beef short ribs slow cooked in a chianti wine sauce, served with portobello mushroom risotto and steamed vegetables. I had the Chicken & Gnocchi Veronese, sautéed chicken with traditional Italian dumplings, topped with zucchini, onions and roasted red peppers in alfredo sauce. Two more huge portions and we did our best, but I was hardly able to make a dent into my portion.

We were really full when we left and decided that instead of going to a park we would rather go shopping. So we went to Walmart and PetsMart before we hit the Florida Mall where we spent quite some time at the M&Ms World and strolled through some of the novelty shops there before we hit the Disney Store. They had a few very nice special offers, so we could not resist buying a few articles.

  But the restaurant was rather huge and we were told to stand by as we would be seated shortly. It really did not take long and we were taken to a booth and handed a menu. A short while later a waiter came by and took our drinks order. Diet  Coke, again! We decided to share a starter and after some discussion we ordered the Potato Skins. Crispy potato skins covered with cheese, topped with chives and bacon pieces, and served with sour cream.

 It took a little while for them to be served, but they were really nice and I had most of them. I talked Tom into trying the St. Louis Rib Sampler, I had read about on the Disboards for his main course. A dozen of their St. Louis Ribs, featuring four of Tony’s Signature Sauces, Original, Carolina Honey, Blue Ridge Smokies and Tony Roma’s Red Hots, with fries and coleslaw. This was quite a huge serving, but he really liked them.

I had ordered the Caesar Salad with Grilled Salmon. The salad was crisp with a nice tasty dressing a huge piece of salmon.

We were both too full to order a dessert so we paid for our meal and went outside and decided to do a little shopping on I-drive, but all the stores have about the same cheap stuff and we were soon done with looking at the same things over and over again. Since we didn’t have dessert we decided to drive to Kissimmee and pick up some Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. Their hot now sign was on and we ordered a dozen glazed doughnuts and Tom tried one of their coffees. He did not like the coffee as much as he liked the doughnuts. We had a warm doughnut right there at the shop and then went back to our resort. After a 20 minute drive we made it to the parking lot, parked the car and walked back to our room. Tom made some Emeril coffee and we both had another doughnut before we finally called it a day and went to bed.