Adventure Day

Monday morning, after breakfast, we went to the complex of Universal Parks, parked our car for $12. The parking lot is gigantic, we were directed to park at King-Kong lot. By the time we arrived at around 8:50 AM, a lot of people started to arrive as well. It probably took us 10-15 minutes before we arrived at the main entry after passing through City Walk that appears to be smaller and shorter than the one in Universal City, Hollywood.



My little group made a decision to start with Islands of Adventure, one of the two parks there. There are five islands featuring fun and adventure, called Marvel Super Hero Island, Toon Lagoon, Jurassic Park, The Lost Continent and Seuss Landing. Basically, we are talking about the rides, the fun, the crowd, the show, being wet, cute looking stuff, the typical overpriced food and souvenirs.

And wait, and wait..... for your turn. A tiring, but exciting and happy day!

M&M Store

Orlando's M&M world was opened in 2005 as the second M&M store after Las Vegas. It is located in the Florida Mall, central Florida's largest and most popular shopping destination. Their website says that the store is 16,000 square–feet of colorful chocolate fun and holds over 7000 items, including apparel, household goods, jewelry, toys, and a collector's gallery of specialty items.It also features a full size #38 FORD Fusion NASCAR!

26th Day

Today marked the 26th day of us being in the USA this Summer. After such a long drive and going places around the East Coast and Midwest for 21 days, we flew down south to Orlando for a holiday that feels more like the one that we had prior to coming here.

Orlando gives us such a great feeling, the atmosphere is fantastic, it is a tourist place but yet I don't feel like being in a tourist-y type of place. I know I don't explain myself well here, but for the first time in a long time, I really like the place I am visiting right now. When we came here two and a half years ago, we stayed at Disney resort and only visited Disney parks, which was too much too handle already. But now, we discovered so much more of Orlando.

Unlike our previous visit here, we now drive, therefore we see places that we didn't see before. We can see the wide clean roads, the parks around, the restaurants by the road, the hotels, etc. Driving here is definitely much more relaxing compared to driving around Chicago, Boston or New York. People are not necessarily friendlier than those in other places that we have been to, they just respond differently. Most of them are visitors, coming with the kids or older parents and everyone is busy looking out for each other.

In the theme parks that we went to, we saw many groups of teenagers coming from Brazil and probably some other countries from the southern part of the continent. We saw people from many other countries as well. People that work in the hotels, restaurants, parks mostly come from outside Orlando too. It is almost like a melting pot to me.

In my humble opinion, this is definitely an international place where you can also find food from various origins from all over the world. Your need for food is well taken taken care of here. Aside from the regular establishments that you can find elsewhere like Denny's. Uno's Chicago Grill, Taco Bell, TGIF, Olive Oil, Cheesecake Factory, etc, there are plenty of Chinese, Thai, Indian, Vietnamese, Brazilian, Mexican, Italian restaurants, etc.

Orlando is also a great place to shop. We have visited a couple of their super-fantastic malls: Florida Mall and Mall at Millenia. They also have an excellent selections at their Factory Outlets: Orlando Premium Outlets and Prime Outlets. It is definitely so hard to go home empty handed, giant sale signs are everywhere! Even when you do not need anything, you are likely end up buying something. Target shops and Wal-mart stores are within the vicinity too.

I definitely want to come back here for more. It is no wonder that the region estimated a total of more than 52 million visitors a year, there's so much of everything for everybody.

Ooopsss.... Kimonos!

Here we were, in Orlando. We were excited to be here, we came here two and a half years ago and looked forward to see more of the city and the resort area. The first thing we thought of was to have dinner(!!) at this Japanese restaurant that we all so strongly remembered to be located at one of the Disney hotels. After google-ing the net, the name Kimonos popped up and rang the bell. The restaurant is located in the Swan hotel at Walt Disney World.



To our disbelief, the restaurant was not the one that we ALL imagined to be. We have been to Kimonos before, but it did not match with what we had in our head. We couldn't believe that we could be so wrong and tried so hard to think of where the restaurant that we had in mind is. We were disappointed, especially the kids. DH was strongly convinced that it is in Anaheim, while the rests of us just couldn't be sure. We have traveled all over the place so much that sometimes all memories got so muddled up. I said, I would trace picture folders to find it.



As we were hungry and didn't want to pay $10 for the car park there without eating, we decided to have a light dinner at The Kimonos anyway. Inside, there was a noticeably dramatic collection of ornate kimonos that are suspended along the fringes of the room. We got to sit wherever we wish.



We started off with ordering Spider Rolls, Dancing Eel Roll and Pot Stickers. The service was a bit poor, it seemed that they didn't have enough human resources to deal with a few customers. Nevertheless, the food that came to our table was sooooo... well prepared and tasted good.



Subsequently, we wanted more food and K wanted to have the same rolls plus salmon sashimi. L wanted Udon with vegetable and shrimp Tempura as she found out from the menu that the restaurant offers more than just sushi. DH ordered one cup of green tea, but it never came, but was billed.





Lastly, this is our limo, parked in front of the hotel!!!! Just kidding..................

Dinner At Sawaddee

This was in Providence, in the evening upon our arrival in Providence area after a long jammed drive from Princeton. We headed to another Thai restaurant to have our Pad Thai No 7 (Yay!!!!!) in a truly tiny Thai restaurant.

We ordered our usuals again (yes, we are just boring!), Pad Thai, Green Thai Chicken Curry and Vegetables. The food was authentic, the fish cakes were good and the Pad Thai was reasonably great as well. K enjoyed a nice dessert of mango and sticky rice.

Lunch At Paragon

Before we left for New York from Providence last week, we had lunch at a cafe restaurant on Thayer Street in the Brown University neighborhood. Miss L had a dinner there the night before and she really liked the food there. She recommended us to try their Calamari. The prices were reasonable, the atmosphere was fine, but our table was so cramped, it was so hard for any of us to settle in and out without disturbing the table next to ours, even the waitress had a hard time serving us.


Fried Calamari tossed with peppers infused oil


DH's Paragon burger & fries



L's Ravioli Formage


K's Penne in a basil cream with grilled chicken


Paragon Salad served with balsamic vinagraitte

We liked the food in general, but the size of food was a little too much for all of us.

Longwood Gardens - Seeing Other Colors Too

Still showing pictures from Longwood Gardens, these are some of the colorful ones!

Longwood Gardens - Seeing Green

Longwood Gardens are just so peacefully green, the gardens are so well maintained and pleasant in the eyes. This is just the type of garden that I wish I could easily revisit often. I wish I had more time to explore the garden, but because of our time constraints, we could not.



The gardens comprise of 1050 acres of gardens, woodlands and meadows, located in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Reportedly, the gardens has 20 outdoor gardens as well as 20 indoor gardens.