It was a mad few days in the run up to the hurricane. As the news reports worsened, everything started to close down, people were panic buying bottled water, tinned food and other essential supplies, and the weather slowly began to turn more bleak. Our resort basically became like a ghost town. When the storm arrived in the night sleep proved difficult owing to the strong winds battering against the walls and windows, and the continual heavy rain. It was actually pretty scary thinking that at any moment an object could come crashing through the window. Fortunately we’d taken all the patio furniture off our balcony to avoid any of it being swept away! The only signs of the hurricane when we awoke the next morning were debris on the ground and lots of upturned trees. So, all in all we got off very lightly compared to other areas of Florida.

So, after a few days confined to the apartment it was nice to see things had returned to normal, with the sun out in full force again.

We decided to do a walking tour of some of the themed Disney hotels located on Lake Buena Vista shown on the map:

We had hoped to take a boat trip down the river from Disney Springs to reach them but the boats were not running due to a high water level after all the rain. Therefore we set off on foot to navigate our way around the lakes and many pathways, hoping we didn’t get lost.

There were 4 hotels to visit on our tour…Saratoga Springs (equestrian themed), Old Key West (Florida Keys themed), Port Orleans French Quarter and Port Orleans Riverside (New Orleans themed). They are all big resort hotels so it was fun to wander around them.

One of the main reasons for going was we had read that there was a café in Port Orleans that serve Beignets (deep fried, soft, doughnut like square pastries served warm with lots of powdered sugar), based on the famous Beignets that are served in Café Du Monde in New Orleans. How did they compare?…they were not quite as good but they were still very tasty and definitely worth the 6 mile trek to get there! They were Mickey shaped too, of course. We also stopped for a pint at the pool in Port Orleans which also went down well.

The following day we went to International Drive which is an area of shopping, bars and restaurants about a 25 minute drive away. One of the bars, Tin Roof, is a live music bar which very much reminded us of being in Nashville. They have live music on every day and today was “Beatles Beat”, a Beatles tribute band. They were actually pretty good.

Lazy day by the pool today, and we are off to Seaworld tomorrow for our first Theme Park of the trip.

Lucy