A Weeklong Celebration

It seems like we spent an entire week celebrating my birthday! Wed. was dinner with Paul and Anne at a place called Manny’s Chop House (www.mannyschophouse.com/). Every Wed. night is buy one get one free fajita night, and the place opens at 4pm but they said we needed to get there by 3:30 because of the crowds. When we arrived, about 70 people were already in line! They opened the doors at 3:45, we had a table within about 5 minutes, and a couple minutes later all the tables were taken, and they were passing out beepers. Our server said that the place is packed like that every night. Paul and Anne got the special of the day (beef medallions) that came with "Manny’s endless salad bowl" while we just got the fajitas. They didn’t come with beans or rice, but the meat provided on the sizzling, steaming plates and served with tortillas was more than enough of a meal! Good meal…good friends.

Thurs., March 25, was my birthday, and we headed to Epcot to meet up with Dick and Beth, another couple we had met down in the Keys. (In fact, Dick is the one who taught me to kayak.) They had recently moved from NJ into their new home about an hour north of here and were going to be staying in their RV at Ft. Wilderness, the Disney campground, with son, daughter-in-law, and grandkids for 3 days. Beth had e-mailed about the four of us getting together so we invited them to join us for a late lunch at the Biergarten restaurant at the Germany pavilion. It’s served buffet style with an oompah band performing a 20 min. show every hour and is one of my favorite places to eat at Epcot. We hadn’t been there in about a year and a half so I was really looking forward to it. As expected, the food was great, the band fun, and our server along with two others came to sing happy birthday to me in German!

Afterwards we arrived at the American pavilion in time to catch the Spirit of America Fife & Drum Corps, went inside to listen to the a cappella group Voices of Liberty, and then into the auditorium to watch The American Adventure, a 30-minute show highlighting events in American history featuring audio-animatronics figures and film, and narrated by Ben Franklin and Mark Twain. Dick and Beth had never seen it before and thoroughly enjoyed it.

We drove them back to Ft. Wilderness, met the family (who had just returned), and made a plan to all meet the next night for the Flower Power Concert series featuring Starship Starring Mickey Thomas (http://www.mickeythomas.com/). We had seen them at Epcot in Oct., and when we heard they’d be back in Apr., it was definitely on our must see list...and once again they were awesome!! We're just continually amazed at the energy and powerful voice of Stephanie, the gal sharing lead vocals with Mickey. We had great seats for both shows we attended, and they sang such Starship hits as Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now, Somebody to Love, and at both shows had the place rockin’ with We Built This City. During the last show, Mickey also broke out the acoustic guitar and seemed to surprise even the band with his rendition of Rocky Raccoon. Excellent, excellent shows!! Following the performances we scoped out a location for the Illuminations fireworks…another great day with good friends.

Several weeks earlier I had planned to spend Sat. with my friend, Linda, and her daughter, Angela, who live in Tampa. They arrived around 11am, we stopped for lunch at Flippers Pizzeria, and then headed for miniature golf at Disney’s Fantasia Gardens. I can’t even remember the last time I played miniature golf, and of course, Disney makes it lots of fun…Angela had a blast! Afterwards we rode the monorail, checked out the animals at Animal Kingdom Lodge, and finished with ice cream at Ghirardelli’s in Downtown Disney. What a great day!



















Sun. afternoon we had quite a pleasant surprise when a knock on our door proved to be from our Danish friends, Anne and Henrik! We had met them 2-1/2 years ago in DeFuniak Springs, FL, when we had all stayed at the same campground. Though they were only there for three days, we became fast friends and have continued to stay in touch. Over the last couple of years, they have been in the states for 6 months at a time, but it seems we were always at opposite ends of the country. This year they were going to be in Orlando when we were, had asked where we were staying, and made plans to stay at the same place starting April 5 for three days. So what a surprise when they knocked on the door March 28th! They were staying up the road, and the plans they made had changed so decided to pop by for a visit. Henrik brought some special beers for him and Russ, and I broke out a bottle of wine for Anne and me. We spent a couple hours outside catching up and just enjoying each other’s company. The perfect end to a great week.