Day 03 - Shopping & Stuff

TLDR: Not much happening today, breakfast, shopping, hotel, pool (ish), games room, winner, dinner, bed. It was good to chill out and get some down time and due to this it means I’m finishing today’s entry prior to midnight tonight :)

Breakfast, yes. But what about second breakfast?

Breakfast at the hotel, finally! Coffee and carb overload, which mainly consisted of French Toast, Biscuits (scones), Croissants and Bagels oh and a side of bacon - cant forget the bacon! Probably not the best options considering today was gonna be a slow one, but hey I was making up for the last three days (that’s how it works, right?). The other guys chose a selection of fruit, pastries, pancakes, and cereal. It ended up not too great value for money (even though it was a buffet), so we’ll need to consider if breakfast at the hotel is going to be an option for us in the future.

Picked up my mum and dad and headed off to one of the Shopping Malls. These things are huge and we lost our bearings once or twice trying to find our way around. First real shop we were in was Nike, probably one of my favourites and spend an age trying to get trainees for all the kids. Robert, an avid football fan, picked up a nice pair of football boots in his favourite colour - bright yellow! It was the first time he used his prepaid debit card too and he was really chuffed as he had been memorising his pin number since we left home. After a few more sports shops however, the kids started to get tired and irritated even after hitting a Toys R Us, so we cut our losses and headed to the car. We’ve a few more days of shopping planned so we’ll hopefully be better prepared next time. I did hope to check out Bed, Bath And Beyond (yes you read that right) prior to leaving but didn’t quite manage. I picked up a Darth Vader travel cup last time which I’ve used religiously for the last two years going to work and thought it might be time for a change, or two, or however many I can fit into a suitcase :P Next time tho!

The rain is falling straight down… and kind of to the side like.

Spent some down time at the hotel after that and the kids wanted to try the hotel pool out for the first time. All excited we got our swimming stuff on and headed to the pool which was just around the corner. Not less than two minutes in the water and they called to say that the pool was closing due to the weather! Whaaaaat because of a few specks of rain??? (more likely because of the huge thunderstorms rolling our way :P). So we hit the games room instead, it was tiny but the kids managed to play some air hockey and retro space invaders. Then they wanted to try out a grabber machine - y'know those big machines with prizes and a big claw that you use to grab said prizes but never win? (well except for Kevin, he’s a genius at them). Gracie tried, she tried and failed. I had one set of tokens left and it was a toss up between a wee shot of Terminator Salvation or another chance at the never-to-be-won prizes. Against my better judgement I gave Robert the last try a the grabber thing and… he won! And won a ball of all things… :)

Chili’s for dinner tonight, which was pretty great Mexican fare. It was also 2 for 1 on drinks, so we all ordered a beer thinking that she would adjust the number to the minimum amount - no she gave us 2 for 1 EACH! Oops. There was also a tablet on the table which Patrick picked up to play, turns out it was 2 bucks a game though he only played 4 before we realised, that could have been a pretty expensive endeavour!

Home after and straight to bed (well just after posting this) - we’re all up real early for tomorrow’s big adventure, Hollywood Studios!