So. We leave the super awesome, amazing, and basically free Hampton Inn and armed with Paris Hilton sunglasses, Clif bars, and SPF 85 sunblock to prevent tan lines on the wedding day, we depart. We program the GPS to take only the streets. No more tolls for us! 20 minutes later, we arrive glitch free--the magic has begun!
Our hotel was AMAZING! So beautiful! It was Italian-themed and modeled after a little village, with winding streets and courtyards and everything--even really good cannoli cream! But we'll come to that. For now, I'll just say that they upgraded us to a junior suite with a view of the reconstructed Portofino Bay! Here's the view from our room!
As soon as we were done checking in, we wanted to zoom over to the park, but since there were only about 3 hours until my talk and the talk was supposedly an hour away (at the other end of the park from the one we were staying in), I figured it would be best if we didn't go back to the room for me to change from theme park casual to clergy professional. Hence, the following:
Who ever would have thought--a clergy person at Universal Studios? Ha ha ha!
Luckily, I didn't get much attention because folks were zooming around dressed as Rita Skeeter and Delores Umbridge, and I didn't stand a chance against their elaborate garb!
We lunched at Mythos, reputed to be the best theme park restaurant in the country, and it certainly was! The meals were really reasonably priced for a theme park (around 9 dollars--which is great, considering it was sit down), and it was a bargain compared to Disney World, where a lunch like this would have been 15 dollars at least! We ordered tempura shrimp sushi as an appetizer and then for a main meal, we split pad thai and a chicken wrap that was amazing! It was like one of those Vietnamese summer rolls but with chicken in it. The best part: three dollar dessert sushi with fruit rollup and sushi rice made of...you guessed it....rice krispie treats! I loved it. Eric described it as, "Sugar embedded in sugar, wrapped in sugar, sprinkled with sugar and covered with....powdered sugar."
Did I mention the dentist told me I had my first cavity two days ago?
Following lunch (which took a little longer than expected because we had three yummy courses instead of one), we headed to the talk. Eric loved the convention--he got such a kick out of seeing everyone all dressed up! His excitement was probably the best part, as the talk was pretty uneventful and then we headed back to the park! We decided to circle around the different Islands of Adventure leaving the Harry Potter area for last, as a kind of reward. Our first stop: the comic-themed Island.
Now, for those of you who don't know, Eric loves comics! He knows the location of just about every comic shop in Boston (even though he's only lived here four months) and can give you an evaluation of each. He reads at least three comics a week and participates in a comic book podcast with his fellow Iowan enthusiasts. So visiting this part of Universal made Eric like, well, a kid in a comic shop! He was talking so quickly and excited, trying to educate my ignorant mind about the difference between Batman and Spiderman and how the Fantastic Four have skills that are supposed to mirror the four elements. In fact, here he is in the Fantastic 4 car!
This was another point at which our amazing hotel became even more amazing! Our hotel room keys doubled as a kind of fastpass for every ride, so that we covered virtually everything in the park in about two hours, which meant....we had time for Harry Potter before dinner! The lines for rides were too long, so we decided to come back another day, but we did manage to make it into Hogsmeade, and it was amazing!
The whole area is very small, packed with people in gear from the conference, and since it only opened a month ago, the lines were insane. Here we are snagging a pumpkin juice and butterbeer (I preferred the former, Eric the latter) before we stood on line to get into Zonkos and Honeydukes, which was all we could manage before dinner.
The line for Honeydukes was well worth the wait! We bought candied pineapple and cauldron cakes and all sorts of other delicacies, like blood lollipops! Zonkos was a little less exciting but still atmospheric to walk around.
Chocolate covered frog at Honeydukes!
Oh, and the taste of the pumpkin juice and butterbeer! I really loved the pumpkin juice--it almost tasted like liquid pumpkin pie. Yum! The butterbeer, sadly, was not what I thought it should taste like (like those buttery coverings on pretzels). Eric surmised it was cream soda topped with a butterscotch cream foam, which was the highlight of the drink!
The best part about the world for us that night was how immersive it was. Our friend Monica, who went a few weeks prior, told us to go in the evening because it was more believably England than at 2pm on a hot Florida afternoon. This was definitely true. There was something wonderfully magical about sipping our drinks and watching Draco Malfoy slither into the Hog's Head while the sun set over Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
From Hogsmeade, we walked to Louisiana for dinner! Okay, that was me totally channeling my inner Samantha Brown Travel Channel cheesiness--basically, we walked out of the Islands of Adventure to Emeril's, where our friend Monica had given us a giftcard for our shower, complete with reservation! The dinner was amazing, so elegant and chic! We ordered this andouille sausage with carmelized onions as an appetizer that left us dipping bread into whatever remaining sauce was on our empty plates! For dinner, Eric had a ribeye with lobster mashed potatoes and I had duck that came with this soy butter sauce which tasted like caramel (I asked for extra it was so good).
We walked back to our room that night (or, if I'm honest, we took a rickshaw because Eric had gotten some bad blisters) feeling so blessed for all the people who'd made our trip possible--for Air Tran for botching up Eric's flight 6 months ago and giving him two free round trip vouchers, for the support I got from BU to give the talk, and for Monica's amazing dinner arrangements!
Stay tuned for another day of adventures! Up next: a visit to Hogwarts Castle and a roller coaster where you could choose your own background music!
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