A lazy day is a good day

We woke up to another beautiful morning and not knowing how to spend the day. Before we went on vacation I had made a detailed plan, but sticking to it was not always easy – sometimes the plan just didn’t feel right. So we decided not to follow the plan and enjoy breakfast out on our veranda. Tom had some coffee and I stuck to my tea, we had sandwiches which Tom prepared with stuff out of the fridge and there were still some leftover doughnuts which we micro waved. The view from the veranda was beautiful and we enjoyed sitting there and do nothing. But by mid morning we started to get antsy and wanted to do something. So we came up with the idea of visiting some resorts. And what better resort to start with than Port Orleans Riverside.

It was close by and why not visit the neighbours down the road. So around 10.30 we got ready, walked down to the car and drove over to Riverside. We took our time, explored the lobby and the store and then proceeded to walk back to the Riverside Mill, check out their menu and offerings and finally walked outside to explore the grounds.

So we strolled across the bridge, over to the main pool area, explored the pool bar and finally walked past the fishing hole and over to the Bayou buildings. We had a good look around, but then clouds started to roll in and we decided that it would be better to head back to the car. We walked along Magnolia Bend and the sun came back so we just kept on walking, had a good luck at the construction going on. Finally we crossed over the bridge along the road to the other side of the Sassagoula River and kept on walking towards Port Orleans French Quarter. By that time it had gotten scorching hot and we more or less dragged ourselves to the Main Building to enjoy the air conditioning.

We must have looked at every item in the shop until we felt like we could go outside again. Before that we walked through the Sassagoula Floatworks to have a look at the menu, nothing had changed and it wasn’t really time to have lunch yet, so we wandered outside again and thought about the walk back to Riverside. And then it dawned on us, there was a boat running between the resorts.

When we got to the docks we could just see a boat going under the bridge, but we decided to just wait anyway. About 15 minutes later the next boat arrived, many of the people waiting wanted to go to Downtown Disney, and only 3 families were waiting for the boat to Riverside, so it was easy to find a seat and enjoy the ride back to Riverside. Once we had arrived we walked into the Riverside Mill and had a look at their menu, but there was nothing that really peaked our interest, so we decided to head over to the Contemporary Resort to have lunch at the Contempo Café. We had eaten there before and liked the food and they had a few cupcakes I was ready to try.

So we walked over to the car and a few minutes later we were approaching the Contemporary Resort. We parked our car and walked to the hotel, enjoyed the air conditioning and went up to the restaurant. It was around noon and the restaurant looked quite full, but we got in line anyway. We ordered our food at the kiosks, then walked up to the bakery to order our desserts. At check-out you are handed a buzzer and with that in hand we picked up our drinks and found a nice table. We started taking photos of the desserts and while we were still doing that the buzzer went off. Tom went to pick up our order and we were ready to dig in. We had decided to share our dishes and had ordered the Honey Lime Chicken.

It was served with pepper jack cheese on multigrain roll with salsa-Ranch dressing and the Spice Crusted Mahi, topped with citrus-apple slaw on a Kaiser roll. Both were freshly prepared, hot and tasty. Then we were on to dessert. Tom had chosen the Black Forrest cupcake, a chocolate cupcake topped with swirls of vanilla buttercream frosting and a chocolate covered cherry on top, filled with cherry pie filling. My choice was the Florida Strawberry cupcake, a vanilla cupcake topped with strawberry frosting, dipped into red and white sprinkles and a piece of fresh strawberry on top. Once you cut into it, it is filled with preserved strawberries – so good.

Both were too huge and even though we tried our best, we were not able to finish them both. Once we had finished our lunch we walked over to the shop and took a good look around. And while doing that we discovered that it had started to rain, well, not rain but a downpour. We killed some more time exploring the resort and when the rain subsided a little bit we hurried back to the car and drove back to Old Key West. It was still raining when we arrived so we just decided to rest a little in the villa. Tom put the Jacuzzi to good use, while I tried to catch up on emails. In the afternoon we sat outside on the balcony for a while and then thought about what to do with the rest of the evening.

We had an ADR, but didn’t really feel like it, so we used the dining website to find out what was available. The Yachtsman Steakhouse had availability and we had too many table service credits left over anyway, so we cancelled our existing reservation and made a new one for the steakhouse. Once that was done we rested a little more and finally got ready to drive over to the Yacht Club Resort. We were a bit too early, so we explored the resort a little. We walked into the store, had a good look around, watched people having fun at Stormalong Bay and finally walked over to the restaurant. We signed in, were handed a buzzer and told that we had about a 15 minute wait and we were free to walk around.

Well, that’s what we had just done, so we found a seat and waited patiently for our buzzer to go off. It didn’t take very long and we were called to the podium and taken to our table. On the way the host pointed out the different meat cuts being on show in a huge window and he seemed pretty proud of them. Shortly after we had been seated our server arrived, introduced herself, offered to explain the menu and took our drinks orders.

It didn’t take long for her to return with our Diet Cokes, followed by a basket of warm Onion Rolls, and a small dish with Salted Butter and lots of Roasted Garlic. Needless to say we tried everything and were very happy with it. We enjoyed the nice ambience of the restaurant and watched one chef happily serving wonderful plates of food. It didn’t take too long and our entrees were served. Tom had decided to go with the server’s recommendation and had ordered the 24-oz Center Cut Porterhouse, served with Smoked Paprika Fries and Roasted Garlic Butter, which was huge. I had ordered the 8-oz Center Cut Filet Mignon, which came with  Mashed Potatoes and Cabernet Wine Sauce. And we both enjoyed our main courses very much.

And once we had finished our main courses there was still dessert to conquer. Our server brought us the dessert menus and I chose the Habanero – infused flourless Chocolate Cake with Mango compote and lime sorbet, which was wonderful and I really enjoyed the taste of the chilli in it. Tom wanted to try the Lemon Pudding Cake, Blueberry Shake, Fruit Leather and Mt. Tam Cheese. It did not only look good, it WAS a wonderful dessert. We had thought about heading over to Epcot for the fireworks after dinner, but we were both far too stuffed to do so. So instead of going to Epcot we rolled back to our car and drove back to Old Key West. We spent the rest of the evening lounging in front of the TV and trying to digest the wonderful food we had just had.