We're on a roll here! Let's keep it going!
Day 8, Tuesday 12-7-10
After all the mayhem of a 18-hour day yesterday, we were ready to relax a little bit. Our original itinerary had us spending the morning at AK, with a lunch ADR at Sanaa. But somewhere along the way, Mouseoholic had discovered that there was an available slot for a couples spa treatment at Mandara in the Dolphin, and had booked it for us. So we blew off the itinerary and slept in. When we finally got up, I walked over to the Boardwalk Bakery and brought us back some yummy breakfast croissants. We then enjoyed a casual walk in the brisk morning air in the beautiful garden area at the Boardwalk. No, that’s not Boilerbabe’s scarf from last night… they both just happened to have similar scarves. Great minds think alike.
Then we made our way over to the Dolphin, pausing for some pictures along the way:
When we got there, we were surprised by how crowded the lobby was. Turns out all the Major League Baseball big-shots were there for some kind of annual contract negotiations or some such thing. The place was packed with all kinds of celebrities and media people. We hung out for a few minutes to soak up some of the energy from all the excitement:
Then it was time to head in for our spa treatment. The place was gorgeous, and we loved the décor. Mouseoholic went nuts taking pictures of all the amazing details:
The best part of the spa is the interior after you’ve gone through the dressing rooms. Obviously, at that point, we’re not going to be carrying our camera, seeing as how we’re now in bathrobes and sandals. But we absolutely love this place, and recommend it to everyone. So here’s a link for you to check out the rest of it for yourselves:
http://www.swandolphin.com/activities/spa.html
Our spa treatment was the Couples Retreat Ritual, which consisted of herbal tea and fruit in a meditation room, followed by 30 minutes in a private Jacuzzi, followed by 40 minutes of full-body massage, and wrapped up by 10 minutes or so of “cool-down” in the meditation room. Then we enjoyed individual steam rooms and hot showers, after which we headed back to the Boardwalk. Yeah, at this point I’d say we were VERY relaxed!
We weren’t really all that hungry, but knew we needed some lunch. So we stopped at the Screen Door General Store and picked up some microwave-able goodies to take back to the room. As we were reaching our room, we were delighted by a family of squirrels playing right outside our door:
Mouseoholic was really tired, and not feeling very well, so she went straight to bed for a nap. I sat around for awhile just reading a newspaper, enjoying the room, and munching my microwave burrito. Then I joined her for a nap. Later that afternoon, the Boilers came over and hung out with us for a while. We sipped some drinks, munched some snacks, and just generally had a good time hanging out and talking. The Mickey and Minnie that the ladies are holding were gifts to us from the manager at Coronado Springs. It was her way of apologizing for what we went through with the room issues while we were there. I had forgotten to mention that in my earlier posts:
Now it was almost time for dinner. We had an ADR at Via Napoli for the four of us, so we headed over to Epcot to see what kind of mayhem we could cause before dinner. Apparently we stopped at the Morrocco Pavillion at some point and took this picture, but for the life of me I honestly can’t remember doing that.
Maybe Mouseoholic did it:
Via Napoli was a pretty cool place. I loved the décor, especially the ovens, and the food was very good. Mouseoholic insisted that it was her turn to be the official “camera mouse”, so she took all the pictures. Unfortunately, she didn’t realize that the camera was set on manual mode, not autofocus, so none of them turned out very well.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:
After dinner we wandered around Epcot creating various mayhem and mischief, but we didn’t really get any good pictures. We were too busy having fun, and what pictures we did take didn’t come out well because Mouseoholic still hadn’t discovered that the camera was on manual mode.
Maybe the Boilers have a few, but we’ll have to wait for their version of events to see for sure. Sadly, the fact that I don’t have pictures to remind me means that I can’t remember all that we did. I do know that at some point we went on SSE because I do have a couple shots from that (by now I had gotten the camera back and discovered the problem). I’ve already posted a bunch of pics from other times we rode SSE, so here’s just one new shot that I never got before:
When we got tired of tearing up Epcot, we decided to go check out the night-life along the Boardwalk. The plan was to go to Jelly Rolls, but when we got there and saw how crowded and noisy it was, and realized that we’d have to pay ten bucks each just to get in for the privilege of not being able to hear each other speak, we decided to go to the Big River Grille and Brewing Works instead. That was a nice feeling to be there again, because that’s where we first met. We had a good time sharing stories and laughing it up over some drinks:
It was starting to get pretty late, so the Boilers decided to walk back to our resort with us so they could cut through the lobby and catch a cab back to the Poly. But when we got there and tried to say our good nights, we all realized that we just weren’t ready for the night to end. So we went into the Belle Vue lounge right there next to the lobby and flopped onto some couches where Boilerdude and I sipped some Scotch while the ladies had some wine, and we all had a great time just chatting and sharing stories. But after a while, we were all getting very tired, so we knew we had to call it a night. I think it was almost 1:00 in the morning by this time.
So we said goodnight and parted ways. What a fantastic evening it had been…
More trip report coming soon!
