Abbie's Real Life Blog

Wow, we had such a great weekend in Florida.

I have to be honest.  I did not have high expectations for Florida.  I’ve met a number of very nice Floridians, and some of them had just been… less than thrilled with their home state.  So it was never at the top of my to-visit list, though of course I love beaches and sunny weather same as everyone else.

Tracy’s parents moved to Orlando in late December and have really been enjoying a retirement/second career lifestyle there (well, maybe not so much the second career, but they’ve certainly found it to be a rockin’ place for active seniors).

Our visit in early November was my first trip to Florida, when Tracy interviewed for a geriatrics fellowship and we toured a couple of potential rental houses for her parents.  Now they live there, in one of the rentals we saw at the time, and so this was my second trip to Florida.  Now I have to admit that I am already planning the third trip in my head!

Tracy’s sister and her fiancee (they’re marrying at the end of March!) also came in for the weekend.  It was their first time visiting Tracy’s folks as well, so it was big party time.  They got there a little earlier than we did on Friday night, and were already in bed by the time we arrived to the house around midnight.  Tracy’s folks live in a new planned community in Lake Nona, which is very close to the airport.  It’s in an area that is getting major growth due to the building of a huge new medical facility which will include a medical school, a children’s hospital, and a VA, among other things, in what is now mostly cow pasture.  There isn’t a ton of services there yet, but it looks to increase even despite the economy.

Anyway, we all got up on Saturday and ate breakfast, then took the dogs around the corner to the dog park before we hopped in the car for a trip to Cocoa Beach.  We ate lunch at a little cafe with several vegetarian options and then walked over to the beach.  It was beautiful weather on Saturday- low seventies, sunny… there were some people sunbathing in swimsuits, even a couple of people wading around in the waves, but when my toes touched the water, it was painfully cold.  We walked around the beach for a couple of hours, mostly picking up seashells and just enjoying ourselves.  It was really pleasant.

Something about the beach makes me just sleepy as hell.  I was glad I wasn’t the one driving back to Orlando afterwards.  Luckily it’s only about forty minutes to Tracy’s folks’ house.  (It’s unbelievable that they hadn’t been out there yet since they moved!  But I guess they have slightly different priorities than I do.)  When I lived in DC, I would try to go to the beach at least a couple of times every summer.  I liked Assateague National Seashore, which was about a three hour drive even without a backup on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge on a Saturday morning.  (I preferred Sundays just for that reason.)  I would drive over there, take a swim, and then fall asleep under a bunch of towels.  I would still be pretty tired for the drive home, but I enjoyed those naps a lot.  It sounds silly to drive six hours for a couple of swims and a long nap, but it was always totally worth it.

We went out for Thai on Saturday night to Durian Durian, which had a lot of great vegetarian options.  I was very impressed with the Panang curry and tofu.  Delicious!  I really need to find some good Thai food in Kansas City.

We didn’t do much for the evening- it was late and we were lazy.  For some reason, Tracy’s folks left all of their board games behind when they moved, so we were left with only a deck of cards.  We tried to play some euchre, but failed because some of us did not know the rules and others did not know all of the rules.  Then we played some gin rummy and finally a version of Rummikub with cards instead of tiles.  I definitely appreciated my family’s commitment to stocking board games in the closet after Saturday night, and I will probably start traveling to future family party weekends with Phase 10, Uno, and at least a second deck of playing cards for entertainment purposes.  Not that it wasn’t fun anyway.  We all ended up passing out early.  It was the beach- it is somehow exhausting!

On Sunday, we drove down to the farmer’s market in downtown Orlando and then visited the nearby craft festival.  I don’t think I could ever get over the idea of buying oranges in the middle of winter and considering it local and in-season!  Not to mention all the blooming azaleas and green grass… it was very nice!

Lunch was at Dandelion, which was great- the hippie vegan food I’d been wishing for.  

Vegetarian food usually comes in two varieties, with a third only lately making an appearance.  The first two are Ethnic and Hippie.  

• Ethnic Vegetarian involves the vegetarian specialties that are common in international restaurants, like Indian, Thai, Chinese, Middle Eastern, Ethiopian, and, to a lesser extent, Japanese, Greek, Korean, Vietnamese, and Mexican.  I don’t care where you are in the US- if you’ve found one of these types of restaurant, you’ve likely found multiple vegetarian selections on the menu.  (American restaurants usually have one vegetarian selection on the menu, which makes it less of a selection and more of a requirement.)  
• Hippie Vegetarian is harder to find (college towns and medium-size Midwestern cities usually have only one, but sometimes as many as three or four, hippie vegetarian-friendly restaurants), but it is usually served in a brightly painted, eccentric-looking place plastered with references to Eastern philosophies, green living, tea drinking, and local organic foods.  The employees are young, beautiful, tattooed, and at least one of them (boy or girl) has dreadlocks.  
• Fancy Vegetarian is the third variety of vegetarian food, and it’s pretty rare.  A large American urban area might only have one Fancy Vegetarian restaurant.  Fancy Vegetarian restaurants staff nice looking kids in a yuppie-looking place, serve extremely expensive food in tiny portions with an extensive (organic) wine list, but it’s usually worth it if you’re looking for a really nice dinner once in awhile.  

There are vegetarian restaurants that don’t fit these categories, but there aren’t many of them.  

After lunch, we drove around Winter Park and peeked in at Rollins College before heading back to Lake Nona to pack up and get to the airport.  We got back very late last night after the evening flight and the drive from the airport.

It was such a pleasant weekend that I immediately started making a plan in my head to get back there to spend more time on the beach.  I am craving a beach nap with a fruity drink and a big stupid book, and I think I can do it, maybe in June if we can make a weekend work with Tracy’s packing and moving schedule.  Oh, that would be very nice.