Sadly our 3 weeks in Orlando has come to an end. It’s simply flown by. We seem to have done a lot but still not everything….. but we have had an amazing time. Really enjoyed our time here both in terms of the Disney days and our stay at the Marriott Grande Vista. It’s so nice to have this resort to come back to at the end of the day and to have the comfort of an apartment – a real home from home – to relax in. And of course being able to self cater our meals has saved us a lot of money. We even have our own washing machine and tumble drier.
We could have gone to the water park today – we still have water park tickets that never go out of date. It was a beautiful hot day – 76F and sunny. But in the end we decided to stay here at the resort. There are a number of pools here. Two are very large and generally very busy because they have activities around them or they have a giant movie screen. We like the pool in the Golf Village area of the resort. It’s a big enough pool surrounded by lovely tropical landscaping and with the golf course in the background. It’s always quiet too. Generally all adults. Anyway, we pegged out there for the day. Bob printed off our cruise luggage labels which we will need in one week. But other than that, we lazed and read our books.
Came back to the apartment about 330 and packed. Then we headed out to dinner just after 615. We had a hankering for some prime rib and we found a restaurant called Texas Roadhouse that has it on and gets good reviews. It took us about 30 minutes to drive there. Wowzer it was busy. You couldn’t reserve a table but you could go online and add your name to their waitlist so save waiting time on arrival. Unfortunately when I filled our details in and pressed enter, I was immediately blocked from the entire corporate website let alone the website for the restaurant we were trying to visit… No idea why. I think it might have been my UK phone number. Why in hell don’t businesses here deal with foreign phone numbers? Seriously it’s embarrassing. The only country other than here where we have encountered this is India. It’s so shortsighted and insular…. especially in a state where tourism is No. 1 Industry. Ridiculous. Anyway, it meant we couldn’t go on the wait list till we got there and therefore had to wait 20 minutes. In fact the restaurant system itself that the door manager was using couldn’t handle a non-US phone number either so she had to resort to shouting our name when we reached the top of the list….
Lucky it took a while in a way because the parking lot was absolutely rammed. Bob had to keep circling waiting for a space – and it was a big lot….. this was encouraging on one hand, clearly it was very popular. We got in and it was buzzy and well…. Texan…. in atmosphere. We sat in a booth – always our favourite – and the waitress brought us hot rolls with weirdly cinnamon flavoured butter. Not my favourite at all but the bread itself was lovely. You were meant to order using a tablet device on the table but…. we were both banned!!!! That didnt work. We had to revert to old school paper menus!
We wasted no time in ordering our prime rib.
Prime rib American style is not something we can get in the UK. I can still remember our first taste of this, in Chicago in 1989. We were so astounded not only at the size of the piece of meat but at the incredible softness and tenderness of the meat. It was like nothing we’d ever experienced before. I don’t know what the secret is, whether it’s the beef itself, the cooking method…. I’ve cooked rib of beef in the UK and it is a totally different texture. Not to mention that heaven knows what such a piece of meat would cost at home.
We chose the smallest cut which was 12 oz and we could pick 2 sides. We both picked side salads and mashed potato. It also came with jus gravy and brown gravy on the mash. The salads came first. They were big and contained 2 sorts of lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, egg, croutons, and bacon bits. We both chose home made blue cheese dressing. Yum. The prime rib slice was gorgeous and perfectly rare as we ordered. The outer crust was crisp and well seasoned. The inner meat was unbelievably tender and well flavoured. Literally melt in the mouth. I had a very large glass of cabernet and Bob had a lemonade. It all came to about £65 including 20% tip. We were totally stuffed. An excellent last dinner in Orlando and we would certainly go there again.