On Wednesday, Jon and I headed over (not too early in the morning, though) to Epcot. We had major plans for the Food and Wine festival, which unfortunately, didn't really come to fruition -- more on that later.
We started out going on the "new" Nemo ride at The Seas -- new to us, I should say. We've visited several times since the ride was added, but had just never made it over there before. It was pretty impressive. The technology used apparently took a really long time to develop, and having seen it, I can understand why. Very cool stuff. The ride drops you off in the aquarium portion that was there before the ride existed, and we spent some time looking at the manatees and sharks and whatnot.
Since we got to the park sort of late-morning, and had to wait a while to exchange our vouchers for our annual passes, we were coming up on our lunch reservation. We decided to head back to the World Showcase and start the trek to Italy, stopping in a couple of shops along the way in Canada and the UK.
Lunch was at Via Napoli in the Italy pavilion, which had just opened a couple of months or so ahead of our visit. The restaurant was lovely on the inside -- a nice big open space, gorgeous wooden beamed ceilings, and three fantastic wood-burning ovens. We were seated on the back wall, so we had a good view of everything.
The dining plan worked a little differently here, so we wound up each getting an appetizer (calamari for Jon and the arancini for me), and then we shared our two entrees -- the shrimp Caesar salad and the quattro formaggi pizza.
Jon and I both were pretty excited about eating here, and I think we both were pretty underwhelmed. The food was good -- don't get me wrong. But it wasn't great, and if we hadn't been on the dining plan, I think we would have felt really ripped off. Jon did really enjoy his dessert, though, which was the gelato frizzante (and Italian ice cream soda). And I will say, the service was outstanding. We were taken care of by about three different people, and our main waiter, Andrea, clearly knew how to earn a good tip with the ladies -- he was chatty and flirty, and very easy on the eyes. (Sorry, Jon.)
After lunch, we wandered through the rest of the World Showcase. Jon grumbled about Disney's newest moneymaker, Duffy the Bear, whenever he saw any of his merchandise. My threat to make him have his picture taken with Duffy and wear the "I Hugged Duffy" sticker, sadly, did not come to fruition. We also made our one and only Food and Wine stop at the Poland kiosk. We were just too stuffed from lunch to do much damage otherwise. We shared (although Jon drank most of it) a Belvedere Strawberry Balsamic Chiller, which was as odd as it sounds.
After a ride (at my request) through Spaceship Earth (which for some odd reason was the ride I had been thinking about the most before our trip), we headed back to the hotel to relax for a bit. I should mention here that it was HOT while we were down there -- we had planned for a bit cooler weather than we actually had. So we wound up going back to the hotel and taking showers each day before dinner.
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| Full moon over the Boardwalk |
We headed back to the Boardwalk and hung out there a little while before heading to dinner on the other side of the lake at the Yachtsman Steakhouse. We'd eaten there once before, were very impressed, and were looking forward to our return visit.
We were seated in a small alcove off the main dining room with only three other tables, which was nice and cozy. Only one other table in our room even had kids, and they were very well-behaved!
On a quest to be somewhat adventurous with my food on this trip, I decided to branch out and try the escargot to start. I'd only ever ordered escargot once before, and when it arrived to the table, I was unable to eat it. However, that was a number of years ago, and I've branched out a lot since then, culinarily speaking, so I was excited to give it another shot. I have to admit, they were not what I was expecting at all, but the flavor grew on me, and they were pretty dang tasty! (I expect that the very liberal dousing they got in the garlic-herb butter helped out with that.) Jon started out with the charcuterie board, and I can't find a listing for the components online, but I recall some sort of venison sausage, maybe? From the looks of my picture, there was also some proscuitto and a cheese with some manner of jam. He seemed happy with the whole spread. And yes, it really was brought out on a board -- good thing, as we both would have been disappointed otherwise :)
For entrees, we had -- you guessed it -- steak. Jon went with the New York strip, and I chose the filet mignon. Both good, but not the sort of knock-your-socks-off steaks that we remembered having the first time we were there.
When dessert came around, we ordered the same thing again (two times in two meals!), which was the trio of Valrhona chocolate. We were both tempted by the description of "salted caramel". Yum.
All in all, lovely, if very hot day. For Day 3, we planned to head over to the park we visit the least: Animal Kingdom.
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