Pain and fun and laughter - part 1

Even though we had only gotten to bed around midnight we were up by 6.30 again.

Dawn just started to break and we got our camera ready for the sun to come up. It took a while until both cameras no longer were full of “fog” being taken outside into the already hot and humid air.

But after taking the early morning photos we went back to bed for a while as we had planned on a lazy morning. Around 8am we finally got up, took showers and shortly before 9am we headed to Gasparilla Grill for breakfast.

We looked around, checked what they were offering and how everything was set up and then ordered some breakfast. Tom got us some Diet Coke after we had sat down, while I was supposed to take photos of the food. Turns out my camera was back in the room, but thankfully Tom had his mobile phone with him, so we do have proof of breakfast.

Tom had ordered the

Breakfast Wrap, egg, sausage, potato hash, and white cheddar with tater tots while I stuck with what I already knew, the

Croissant Egg Sandwich, scrambled egg, cheese, and bacon with tater tots. Both were your typical Disney breakfast items and portions were huge, so we both could not finish them. Breakfast done we slowly walked back to our room. We had planned on spending the morning at the pool, but we still needed some items, so we just grabbed our bags and walked over to the car and off we went offsite.

We drove to the nearest Walgreens and did our shopping, then returned to the Grand Floridian

with just enough time to change our shirts before having to leave again to meet our friends Pamela and Jeanette.

Once in the car we both remembered that again we had forgotten to put on sunscreen, but Tom had been clever and put some into his backpack. So when we arrived at Hollywood Studios

and had been directed towards the far end of the row for parking the car, we got out and stopped by the car for a few minutes to apply the sunscreen. Tom sprayed it on himself, while I had him spray it on me. We were already a little late and I very carelessly rubbed it onto my face ….. and into my eyes. Didn’t start right away, but I was already crying my eyes out when we got to the tram. The sunscreen in my eyes was burning. I kept wiping my eyes with a tissue, hoping the burning would stop soon. The tram travelled to the entrance and we went through bag check, the metal detector and into the park and I was still crying, trying to keep my eyes open. To get out of the sun, which hurt my eyes as well, we went through the shops and it helped me a little bit.

But we could not stay for too long as we had decided to meet up with our friends at the Brown Derby Lounge, the outside bar at the Hollywood Brown Derby. When we arrived we were about 5 minutes late, but we didn’t see them and headed for a double table under two umbrellas. We were just sitting down when I heard Pamela’s voice. There was quite a bit of hugging going on and then she finally told us that she and her mother Jeanette had gotten an inside table.

I told her that I had not known that the lounge had inside tables and it didn’t really, it had been a misunderstanding. But now we had a table in a nice air conditioned room and my eyes would hopefully soon stop producing streams of tears. We explained what had happened and I kept wiping my eyes. A server came by and took our orders for drinks and when he handed us the menu it was clear that this was the regular lunch menu, not the lounge one. Well, we did not mind as we had a lot of fun, even with me still silently crying because of my burning eyes. There was a lot to catch up on so it took a while until we were ready to order. We had already snacked on their

rolls and

butter when we finally did. Tom ordered a

Bloody Mary, Absolut peppar vodka and bloody Mary mix garnished with house-made pickles, pickled green beans, celery and olives, which he had had before, while I didn’t even have to look at the drinks menu. What I was looking forward to was the

Grapefruit Cake Martini, Deep Eddy's ruby red grapefruit vodka, Stoli vanilla vodka and a splash of cream with a vanilla wafer rim. All of us had decided on an appetizer and maybe dessert, so Tom got the

Togarashi-crusted Ahi Tuna, house-made kimchi, sesame jasmine rice, sake and ginger-soy glaze, while I got an appetizer size, or at least I thought it was an appetizer size

Famous Cobb Salad with finely chopped greens, turkey breast, egg, bacon, tomatoes, crumbled blue cheese, avocado, chives and Cobb dressing. Tom’s looked like an appetizer, while mine was huge.

I was still crying and my eyes were still burning, so I sat at the table with my eyes half closed, I guess I must have been quite a sight. I was only able to eat about half of my salad and then I had to excuse myself and speed walk over to the ladies room to splash a lot of water into my eyes to ease the pain. I think I spent about 10 minutes splashing water onto my eyes and drying it off again, and while I did this I knew there was only one thing that would really help. Tom and I needed to get back to the resort and I needed to put some eye drops in and close my eyes for a few minutes to stop the burning sensation.

When I finally returned to the table I told Pamela and Jeanette about my decision and told them that I hoped they would not mind using the fast passes, we all had while we returned to our resort to get my eyes sorted out. I was very surprised when they told us that they would come with us. But we had one more thing we did not want to give up, riding Toy Story Mania. I had make FPs for all of us far in advance and we had been lucky enough to push our Tower of Terror one back to later that day, no such luck for TSM though. So we strolled over to the ride and had so much fun in line

and then during the ride, even if I was drying my eyes in frequent intervals. Once we got off the ride we headed to the exit. We all slowly made our way back to our car and off we went back to the Grand Floridian.

Again, we parked at the self-parking, then crossed the main building and tracked over to Conch Key.

Back in the air conditioned room we all relaxed, I had some meds put into my eyes and rested my eyes for a few minutes until I felt better and then it was time to present our gifts for Pamela and Jeanette to them. We had some drinks out of the fridge and just sat there and chatted. And chatted and chatted some more. Time got away from us and when we finally looked at our watches we only had 25 minutes until our reservation at Mama Melrose.