Friday, October 22nd (cont)
Around mid-afternoon, we drove to Epcot for dinner. I had made a reservation at Via Napoli, the relatively new pizza place at the Italy pavilion, for DDs birthday dinner.
This is a really beautiful restaurant!
We got a nice table near the window, and ordered our starters
the Arancini - Fried saffron risotto balls filled with mozzarella and meat ragu.
These were good
but to be honest didnt blow me away. They had a nice flavor, but it was a much milder flavor than I expected.
We also ordered a house salad. This was nice.
And DW enjoyed some sort of peach-wine drink. She said it was good.
For dinner, we got two pizzas. We ordered the ½ meter pepperoni pizza.
And we also ordered an individual sized Pizza Margherita.
Both pizzas were EXCELLENT.
The individual pizza was enough to feed 2 people, and the margherita was very nice. The pepperoni pizza was ridiculously good. Nice spicy pepperoni, and a very thin and delicious crust out of the wood fired ovens. And the ½ meter size is huge!
DD4 really enjoyed the pizza.
We will definitely come here again.
But after our dinner was finished, we had an issue.
We noticed our waitress approaching, accompanied by 2 of her colleagues. And they were carrying this.
Now, I had noted on the reservation that this was DDs birthday. But we didnt order a special cake or anything (at least not from Via Napoli
stay tuned). And we of course didnt ask for them to sing. But here they came!
They sang what I can only assume was Happy Birthday in Italian. It was pretty cool if you ask me. But DD was mortified! She survived though, and although shed never admit it, I bet she enjoyed it somewhat. I mean, from what I was told, one of the guys singing was quite the dish. Something about smouldering eyes? Whatever. But in any case, it happened, and I thought it was great.
So, we left Via Napoli and headed toward the International Gateway. The plan was now to walk to the Boardwalk
and specifically, our destination was the Boardwalk Bakery.
On the way, we passed that freaky cat that always hangs out near France. She looked lonely, so we stopped to say hello.
I swear that cat always smells like cigarettes and kitty litter.
And then we walked to the Boardwalk. We did a bit of shopping, and then found a table near the water. I went into the bakery to get what I had ordered several days before
a Mickey Cake!
The cake was a white cake, with chocolate genache and a white chocolate Mickey face. The genache was good, and the cake looked just like I wanted. Overall though, I thought the cake itself was quite dry. Not as good as I had hoped
although DD loved it. And thats the most important thing. Weve never been away from home for one of our kids birthdays before, so we wanted to do a special cake. This fit the bill.
And after that, we walked all the way back through Epcot to the car and drove back to the house to finish packing and preparing for our morning departure. We hit the road the next morning around 6:15, and had an uneventful journey home. We hit Its Not Cindys parents house for dinner at 4:30 CT
and were home safely about 15 minutes after finishing our dinner with them.
An uneventful drive doesnt make for good trip report material
but its exactly how I wanted it to go and I thank God for it.
And thats that
our unplanned, last minute, off-site non-Fort trip. Itll be a while before we can return to the Fort
so this trip will hopefully hold us over until that time.
Id like to leave you all back precisely where this trip report began. With, as ftwildernessguy so eloquently stated in post #2, a couple lousy pictures of the back of your van.
And why have I posted these again?
Because those two pictures embody what this is all about.
Fort Fiends and Musket Mickey.
Sure, my family and I hit all the parks, including the 5th theme park, we ate so much we could have fueled our van all the way on bottled Ohhhh-HANA, we had a great time with each other and we made memories that we will all cherish forever. But what moment on the trip ranks right up there for me? Our visit with Debbie and Donnie
two wonderful Fiends that I am blessed to call friends. And we got together on the best porch in all of America. Yeah, Disney is great, but I cant see myself wanting to return year after year to stay at some hotel and do parks from morning to night. After now staying off-site, away from the Fort, I really do feel we have something different. We are so lucky to have the Fort, but more importantly, we are blessed to have each other.
Long live the Fort Fiends, and long live Musket Mickey!
Partly.
I just like to randomly push the button on my cheap digital camera. 
yay
