I actually slept until 7 this morning. Guess that 25,000 step day in Epcot was what I needed for good sleep!
Eventually I got up and moving, and headed out for breakfast. It’s Mardi Gras! Where does one go for breakfast on Fat Tuesday? Port Orleans French Quarter!!
They’ve changed things a bit since I was last here, but it was easy enough to find where they’re now selling the beignets. I got 3 beignets with strawberry dipping sauce. Delicious breakfast to put the Fat in Fat Tuesday!
After eating, I poked around for a bit, and then got on the road toward The Villages. Of course, from this end of Disney property, Google sent me I4, but, that turned out to be the least of my traffic issues today!
Shortly after getting on the FL turnpike I saw a sign about “emergency roadwork” and a lane closure 19 miles ahead. That absolutely would impact me. Sometime between Sunday morning and this Tuesday morning, they’d managed to put new lines down, and close the right lane. And because the FL Turnpike is truckers’ alley, the merge for the lane closure was a total cluster.
I finally got to Grammy and Grampa’s after 11. I pretty much got there and was seated for lunch. We had sandwiches and visited. And then T said it was time to go down to the square for the Mardi Gras celebration.
The Mardi Gras celebration didn’t officially start until 4. But retirementville likes to party. Like people line up at the drink stands in the town squares every night before happy hour even starts. There are 3 town squares in The Villages, but Mardi Gras was only being celebrated at the central one (Sumter Landing). So we knew it would be busy.
Sure enough, we got down to the Sumter Landing area and parking was hard to come by. But, I got a parking spot, and we were good to go. We just had to kill like 2 ½ hours.
We walked around a bit checking out the random vendors and also the decorations.
Then we headed for the outdoor bars. We ended up at RJ Gators. Mom and T took advantage of the BOGO specials; mom had a malibu bay breeze (x2..which is unheard of!) and T had a beer of some sort. I skipped the BOGO special in favor of the Mardi Gras special. $5 hurricane? Yes please!
We hung out at the bar for quite awhile, since Mom and T were both eligible for 2 drinks. The weather was a pretty pleasant temperature, but the clouds were building. There was a front forecast to come through that night, and I’m pretty sure everyone in The Villages was hoping that it would hold off long enough to get some partying in.
Once we couldn’t really justify sitting at the bar any longer, we did some more walking around, collecting Mardi Gras beads (surprisingly, despite the reputation of The Villages, this was done without any of the Bourbon Street antics), and taking pictures of the decorations, before finding seats to wait for the music to start. And yes, that is a (light up) plastic shot glass on beads. Because The Villages!
The music tonight was “Stu Okra and the Fixins”, followed by a 2nd line band. There also was a performance by The Villages hula group, because apparently hula goes with Mardi Gras? The music was amazing!
Unfortunately, it started raining around 5, and we knew it would only get worse. So we made the decision to find dinner. Finding dinner took us over to another town square: Spanish Springs. Here we ate at the outdoor bar at Amerikanos. Laura, Mom and I had lunch here last year and really enjoyed it. Nice variety on the menu, delicious food, and reasonable prices. Tonight I had the grilled chicken parm sandwich with their amazing seasoned fries (I think the seasoning involves feta). Mom and T took advantage of the daily special: 2 for 1 pitas. Mom got the chicken pita. T got the “gyro” pita, I think. Both were absolutely loaded with food. And the total for their 2 meals was $10.
Dinner was delicious. While at dinner, I was frequently monitoring my sister’s flight status, and texting with her. I was picking her up at MCO tonight, and it was getting close to go time.
After dinner we headed back to Grammy and Grampa’s, where Grampa was quick to put a plate of his freshly made lemon meringue pie in front of me, before shooing me out the door to go pick up Laura. His pie was delicious by the way.
It was raining pretty hard in The Villages, but just a few miles after getting onto the FL Turnpike, the rain mostly stopped, so the hour and 20 minute drive to MCO was uneventful, thankfully. I found a parking spot in the garage easily, and got a text from Laura that she had landed just as I made it to the 3rd floor of the airport. I sat down on a bench right outside security, and she emerged about 10 minutes after I got to that bench, looking ready for vacation.
Baggage claim was a much faster experience for her than it had been for me, so we were on the road to vacation shortly after 9:30. Our first vacation stop? Not our condo! A little more honoring Mardi Gras!
It was an uneventful ride over to Port Orleans French Quarter, and Laura and I found a table in Scat Cat’s Lounge, where there was live music playing. She got a raspberry mojito (oddly sour), and I got...a hurricane. We enjoyed the music, and she got into vacation mode. We both agreed this was a really great spot to spend some time.
After a bit of time here, we headed for the condo, where we agreed on a time to get rolling in the morning and quickly crashed for the night.
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