[b]Kissimmee
Week 1 February 11-18[/b]
Sunny Low 80’s most days

We had time to kill before we could check-in in Kissimmee. We had enjoyed the little art museum in Melbourne when we stayed in Cocoa Beach last year. We decided to pay another visit. This year’s theme was “Fear and Folly” featuring prints of Francisco Goya and Federico Castellon. There was some pretty gruesome stuff. Interesting in that each print was 41/50.

There were also prints from a “Peace” series that represented several other well known artists. Again each print, regardless, of the artist was the same number from the series.

We walked across the street to Squid Lips for lunch. The food there is excellent especially the key lime pie.

We arrived at Vacation Villas at Fantasy World in Kissimmee about 11:30. We decided to go have lunch at The Lull in the Surfrider that is owned by our owners’ association.

We got back to the check-in building around 12:30. About 1:00 I asked if we could take care of our paper work and pick up the keys at 4:00. Our unit was ready so we were in by 2:00.

On Tuesday, we attended JAVA with the GM which is a meeting for owners with the resort’s general manager. She not only up dated us on the considerable upgrading (approximately 16 million dollars worth) that has been taking place, but told us that an 8 foot alligator had been removed from the pond on the property. There is a pair of sand cranes with chicks that have made this their home here so there was some real concern for their safety.

We’ve only been out to eat 2 times. We went to Smokey Bones Monday night. We were a bit disappointed that Smokey Bones not longer had filet on the steak menu.

We went to Olive Garden Thursday. We really liked the addition of the small desserts.

We cannot easily get to either of these restaurants at home. So they are a once a year stop in Kissimmee.

We are eating out less often than usual because the cruise amounted to eating out every night.

Week 2 February 18-February 25

Saturday was our Between Stays Cleaning, and we like to get out of the unit for that.

We went to Sun in the Fun Air Museum in Lakeland which has a collection of Howard Hughes memorabilia, home built aircraft (experimental), a section on space travel, models of commercial passenger airlines (most defunct) with some interesting photos, and a section about the founding of the Ninety Nines. They started as a group of ninety-nine woman pioneer pilots. The Ninety Nines are still in existence today. In fact, I have a friend who is member. Many of the displays in this small museum were new since the last time we were there.

We went to the Lakeland Regional Airport for lunch. There is an excellent restaurant, Earhart’s, on the second floor of the terminal.

The last time we were there planes were landing and taking off the entire time we were eating. This time there was one fairly large charter plane, and that was it. It was very cloudy.

We went back to the museum after lunch because there are airplanes that are usually kept in a hangar that Paul wanted to see.

There was a dog show in the hangar, so the planes were just out in a field. Last time we were there they handed us the key to the hangar, and told us to enjoy ourselves.

We had takeout from our favorite Chinese restaurant, China. It does not seem to be part a chain. The food is excellent. It is in a small strip mall on the corner of Routes 192 (Irlo Bronson Highway and Route 535). Again, there are no good Chinese restaurants near us at home so this is a once a year treat.

We decided to go to Columbia Restaurant in Celebration on Thursday night rather than our usual Friday night.

We had such terrible service there last year; I contacted the manager after we got home. He sent us a very generous gift card which we used, and then some for our dinner.

We had a 6:00 reservation (early for us). The restaurant wasn’t crowded at all. We thought we’d beaten the crowd by going on Thursday. Well, by the time we left, the place was packed.

We had great service and a pleasant visit with the evening manager. (They knew why we had received the gift card). The food as always was delicious.

Publix ready-made food was a great, albeit an expensive, way to eat in. We had their bourbon marinated salmon, pork chops Florentine, meatloaf, and some other stuff I can’t remember.

We had gorgeous weather the 2 weeks were in Kissimmee. We were able to go to the pool and swim almost every day.

The resort itself is better than it has ever been. With the improvements, it has gone from a nice comfortable place to stay to what we would consider a 5 star resort.

Sue