Off the boat and on with the party - part 1

The alarm clock rang early as we needed to be out the room by 8am. We quickly took showers and then asked our stateroom host if we could leave our luggage in the room until after we had had a quick breakfast at Cabanas and she had nothing against our plan.

So we headed up to Cabanas which was buzzing with people and picked up

some fruit and

breakfast fare and then found a seat. I was guarding our seats while Tom went to get some

Coke, tea and coffee. We both were not very hungry and soon we were done with our breakfast, headed back to our room,

one last restroom break, grabbed our luggage and off we went. We must have picked a good time, as there was just a very short line to sign off the ship, go down the escalator and find a porter to help with luggage. The porter knew exactly where to find our luggage, loaded it on his trolley and we got in line for passport control and customs. The line moved pretty fast and soon we were on the way to our parked car.

Luggage loaded into the car and we were on our way to Walt Disney World by 10 to 9.

We did one more drive around to wave goodbye to the Dream

and then we were really heading towards Orlando again. The drive was pretty uneventful

and at half past 10 we had made it to the Yacht Club. We dropped off the luggage at Bell Services, parked the car and went to check-in and pick up our Magic Bands. Needless to say that our room was not ready but that was what we had expected. So we just headed over to Epcot. No line at the International Gateway and we were in.

We had been so looking forward to it, as we had never had the chance of being at Epcot during Food and Wine and this time it started so early that we now had close to a week to enjoy it all. The booths had already opened and we hungry, having only had a small(ish) breakfast. So, our first stop was Canada, where Tom had

a Moosehead, and I had gotten

a bottle of water and we had decided on getting the

Canadian Cheddar Cheese Soup served with a Pretzel Roll and the

�Le Cellier� Wild Mushroom Beef Filet Mignon with Truffle-Butter Sauce. We have not been to Le Cellier in a long time, so that was the perfect treat and it was gone in no time. We did not have time to try something else, as we had to make our way over to the Festival Center for a Culinary Demonstration on Tuna.

It did take a bit until we found the Festival Center and until we had finally figured out where the demonstration took place. We showed our tickets, were asked into the area and found a table.

Unfortunately the air conditioning started to get to me and it was time to use many a handkerchiefs again while watching the chef preparing the dish.

While he was still perfecting his dish we were served a tasting portion,

which was very good. Once the presentation was over we walked through Epcot for a while until we got an email stating that our room was ready.