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Spring Break with the Mouse – Part 2

2009-04-14T01:24:04Z

If I didn’t get back to blogging about Spring Break within the next couple of days, I can guarantee that it would have ended at a single post. So to keep up with my resolution to see at least one blogging series through to completion I give you Part 2.

My brief encounter with the Best Western Lakeside ended early on Saturday morning after a quick shower and uneventful checkout. I was excited to make my way to the Coronado Springs Resort to check in before watching some lacrosse and baseball games. My day started off right because a Dunkin Donuts was located just down Hwy 192 from the Best Western. I picked up a bag of ground coffee to stock up our room at CSR. Nothing worse than hotel room coffee packs, even at Disney. Actually I shouldn’t say even at Disney, they are notorious for their lack of good coffee.

I was fully expecting to wait for our room to be ready, but at least I could get checked in and then come back when the room was ready. I was quite surprised that our room was already available for checkin at 8am. I could have waited for a room in the Cabana section that we requested, but our room in Casita 5 was perfectly fine. The room was on a corner so there were only neighbors to one side and it looked out on the courtyard with a nice fountain.

After a brief trek around the resort I headed off to Disney’s Wide World of Sports complex to see our girls lacrosse team take on a team from Phillips Exeter Academy. I am guessing that this wasn’t their top varsity team, mostly because there was no coach and they weren’t wearing uniforms. However, they still gave us a good test but we still came out on top.

A good lacrosse game always makes me hungry so it was time to drive over to the Animal Kingdom Lodge for a late breakfast reservation at Boma. I really want to stay at the Lodge on a future visit. The animal viewing on the Savannahs and the food are some of the best I have eaten. Boma is a buffet style restaurant with food inspired by the tastes of Africa. While there was typical American breakfast fare such as scrambled eggs, bacon and ham. However, you are doing yourself a culinary disservice if you didn’t try some of the more adventurous fare such as the Bobotie, a combination of corn beef, eggs, cream, potato and onion. I did save room for a healthy dose of fresh pineapple.

I finished off my visit of the Lodge by checking out some of the animals on the Savannahs, including watching some giraffes being fed. From there it was back to Wide World of Sports for some baseball.

To be continued in Part 3.

Remiss in my duties

2009-04-14T00:21:40Z

I forgot to mention in last night’s blog post that I was prodded to post more this time by Ted. Sorry Ted for leaving out that mention.

Eggstravaganzoo!!

2009-04-13T01:29:01Z

Yesterday was the annual Eggstravaganzoo event celebrating Easter at the Nashville Zoo. Since I have been making the most of my Zoo membership, I figured I would visit and experience the various activities. I did not take part in the Easter Egg Hunts as I am sadly no longer under the age of seven. Outside of the egg hunts there were a number of extras to view that day. Every half hour they would bring out large paper mache eggs for a group of animals to open and play with. I made it to the zoo just before 11, so I was able to see the tiger cubs enjoy their eggs. They were very playful and seemed to enjoy the egg as much as the contents.

I also got to see the elephants open their very large eggs, but my favorite was the African Crested Porcupine. They are typically nocturnal so watching one in actions was a great experience. Their eggs held some sugar free jello eggs and they quite enjoyed it. This is a great event for families, but for these events I highly recommend a Zoo membership. First and foremost you are supporting the continued health of the zoo, but you also get the added benefit of quick entry. The line of people waiting to gain admission was quite long while the members line was empty. You can check out more pics from the day here.

Spring Break with the Mouse – part 1

2009-04-01T02:58:41Z

I’ve been getting various requests for blog updates…ok, I got 2, one from Mom and one from Wysz. So I’ve finally got my act together and will be blogging about my recent Spring Break trip to Disney. I went last year and met up with my Mom there and we had such a great time that we decided to do it again. This year we were joined by my sister and brother-in-law. Only a few days after deciding to do the trip this past October, Disney came out with their 7 for 4 deal, where you pay for 4 nights and get 3 free. It was great timing and allowed us to stay a day longer at a lower cost.

Because the school I work at had their baseball and girls lacrosse team doing spring training at the Wide World of Sports complex, I flew down a day early to catch some games before I met up with the family. I arrived around 7pm, about 40 minutes late because our flight had to find a replacement flight attendant and then had to deice a wing on the tarmac. Yes, we needed to deice in Nashville in March. It was perfect weather to fly away from

While it was already nearing 8pm by the time I got to the hotel, I figured I might as well take advantage of being at Disney, so I headed over to Downtown Disney. After a quick bite at Earl of Sandwich (their Original 1762 roast beef sandwich was quite good) I took the water taxi over to Port Orleans Riverside to check out the River Roost Lounge.

The view from the boat was great and as we passed the Saratoga Springs Resort there was a great view of the new Treehouse Villas. These 3 bedroom Disney Vacation Club accomodations would be a great choice for a large family or a group. After passing Port Orleans-French Quarter I was finally at Riverside and found my way to the River Roost lounge. Supposedly there is normally a piano player there named Bob, but he was off recovering from back surgery. In his place was a guitar player, whose name I can’t quite recall, so for now I will call him Walter.

He was actually quite entertaining and took my request for “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”. So I listened to some live music while enjoying an Agave Nectar Margarita.

Nothing says vacation time like a margarita on the rocks. After some imbibing and music listening I boarded one of the last boats back to Downtown Disney and finally was back to the hotel and asleep by midnight, awaiting my first official day at Disney.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T21:44:51Z

Figured I would get at least one post in 2009

Land Between the Lakes

2008-12-14T20:21:35Z

On the day before Thanksgiving I decided to get outdoors in search of Bald Eagles at Land Between the Lakes. After a quick tour through the Bison and Elk Prarie, I started toward the shore of Kentucky Lake to find some large birds. After a few false starts, and a slightly harrowing 1 mile trek on a back road that was much muddier than I anticipated (I seriously thought at one point my FJ was going to be completely stuck) I ended up near Duncan Lake where a number of eagles were present. When first looking through my pictures I had a couple of large birds that resembled bald eagles but didn’t have the tell-tale white head and tale. A little research on the net revealed these to be juvenile bald eagles. Hope you enjoy the rest of the photos in this Flickr set.

It’s closing time

2008-11-25T22:11:21Z

With all the focus on our tanking economy I guess it should have been no surprise to me that I would come across two websites in the same day that track the closing of various businesses. The first site is It Died which focuses on online entities that are closing shop. Some of the more interesting ones are Google’s Lively and Yahoo Live. From the It Died news feed I then came across Timely Demise. Timely Demise focuses more on the brick and mortar side of the economic equation, keeping track of various retail entities that are closing shop, filing bankruptcy or closing stores. We live in interesting times.

The First Internet President

2008-11-16T01:59:07Z

Ok, people from my mom to my friend Ted have commented that I have not had a blog entry since early August, and in fact never continued to post about my Destin trip. Rather than go back and try to remember my trip to Florida, I figured I would post something different. While I haven’t posted much on the blog of political nature, I thought I would mention this article from Tech Crunch. The article investigates the various means the Obama campaign used to connect people via technology. Of particular interest though are the suggestions of ways in which the President-elect could further use internet technology to create a two way conversation between government and citizens. It seems that the use of the internet was not merely a tool during the campaign, as Obama will now be releasing each of his weekly addresses not just on the radio but also via YouTube video.

Dining in Destin – part 1

2008-08-04T04:00:11Z

I had two goals for my brief trip to Destin; relax on the beach and eat some great food. I think I have accomplished both as I start getting ready to head back to Nashville tomorrow morning. The above picture captures both as it was taken from the deck of the Back Porch restaurant at lunch today. My beach chair is the first one behind the volleyball net with the blue and white beach towel hanging on the back. I will get to lunch today but decided to post about the meals in chronological order.

Dinner – Friday
Upon arrival in Destin and getting settled in my room, I began my search for a place to eat for the evening. I had already done some searching at home and one of the restaurants on my list of possibilities was Zampieri’s Harbor Grille. Given it was just across the street from the hotel it seemed like a good choice.

Appetizer – Chicken and Andouille Gumbo – Generous amounts of chicken and smoked sausage (smoked in house by the chefs) as well as some fried oysters in a light broth. Unlike many gumbos this was very light on the rice and really highlighted the meats. I didn’t even mind the lack of okra. A very good start.
Entree – Potato Wrapped Grouper – I was pleasantly surprised by the entree. I sort of expected a piece of fish with a potato pancake type encasement. Instead it was completely surrounded by very thinly sliced pieces of potato that seemed almost like a nest. The outside was crispy and the inner layers nice and moist while the grouper was thick and meaty. This was nestled on top of a few stalks of asparagus. The stalks were larger but they were tender from top to bottom. The entree was finished off with a citrus butter.
Dessert – Banana Foster Bread Pudding – Wow, sooo good. The bread pudding was nice and warm and served with a Jameson sauce. Along side the pudding was a piece of carmelized banana and some strawberries and blueberries with whipped cream.

Overall a great way to start the culinary excursions.

Coming soon – Saturday Dinner at McGuire’s Irish Pub, Sunday Lunch at the Back Porch and Sunday Dinner at Vin’tij.

Posting some pics

2008-08-03T23:49:18Z

I posted some pics from my beach trip as well as a trip to mammoth caves to my flickr account. http://www.flickr.com/photos/anthonut. The pics in the cave are not that great but there was a family of turkeys we saw on the way in. I counted 10 turklets or whatever they are called . There is also a set from the beach with some dolphin pics but I found it difficult to get good pics of them.