My Mardi Gras experience goes full circle

Kissimmee, FL

Yesterday completed the circle of my Mardi Gras experience and will go down as one of those experiences of a lifetime that you tell your grandchildren about. (No pressure intended G&P :-)).
My next stop was only a couple of hours south of Lake Panasoffkee, at a KOA in Kissimmee, a suburb of Orlando, near the Magic Kingdom. Since I had lots of time, I travelled down small country roads, following my nose instead of the GPS (til I got close), and it was a lovely drive through some beautiful countryside. My opinion of Florida has improved on this trip as I’ve been through some of the rural, small town areas that tourists don’t usually see. Rolling hills, orange orchards, pine forests, small lakes, horse ranches, (do you call them ranches?), and friendly little towns, some of them with quite a lot of history.

The KOA in Kissimmee is outstanding. It’s small, newish, and well maintained. The staff are incredibly helpful and they have the best pancakes of any I’ve had at the traditional weekend pancakes and sausage breakfast. ($3 for that, juice and coffee – can’t beat the price!). They have a pavilion beside the pool and it is a beautiful morning for sitting in the sun enjoying the company of my fellow travellers and this lovely breakfast.

But let me back up a little. When I started planning this NANFA Tour, I thought about all the people I could visit along the way and my friends and family made suggestions too. And I’ve been so lucky to connect with so many people along the way.

When it came to Florida I thought of my cousin Ken who you met a couple of days ago, but I also though of my son-in-law, Phil’s grandmother and aunt and her family that live in Florida. I had met both when Gill and Phil got married, but didn’t really get to spend much time with them then so I was keen to make those stops. Unfortunately I’m not getting to the area where Phil’s grandmother lives, but I was planning on stopping in Orlando where Aunt Tina and her family live, so that stop worked. Through Phil, I started communicating with Tina to set up a day and time, etc.

Then coincidently, Phil’s parents, Ed and Mary Jo, planned a road trip to Florida and so we managed to all end up in Orlando at the same time. I was looking forward to seeing everyone but never did I expect to have the interesting experience I did last evening. You see, Tina works for NBC/Universal here in Orlando and she was able to get spots for Mary Jo, herself and I on as “riders” on one of the floats in the weekly Mardi Gras parade! How special is that!

We spent the afternoon at Tina and Johnny’s home enjoying the Florida sun by the pool and catching up. Then we were off to Universal, which is only a 5 minute drive from their place. After a walk through the Universal site and checking in with our team captain, we were provided with costumes, briefed on our job, told how to throw the beads so as not to inflict damage, and we climbed aboard our float, “Octoberfest”. The floats are designed by the same team that designs the floats in New Orleans and they were absolutely spectacular – even better than the NO ones I think. We were the 4th float out of 13 and the excitement mounted as we waited for the parade to begin. As the gates opened and the floats began to move, we were able to see the group of theme-costumed stilt walkers for each of the floats waiting for their float to arrive to join in the parade.

Mary Jo, Tina and I had the whole front of the float to cover and so as soon as we were out of the gate, we got to work. Of course it wasn’t work, it was so much fun. After being in the crowd trying to catch the beads in Galveston and New Orleans, I could empathize with every one of the hopeful faces in the crowd and so I wanted to throw some to all of them. At times our captain told us to slow down or we’d run out of beads and then he said to speed up as we got nearer the end and still had some left. So we went into overdrive. I have to admit that I may have beaned a few people along the way, because you can’t always be accurate throwing something as unwieldy as beads.

After that exhilarating experience we certainly weren’t ready to head for home so we headed for the restaurant and entertainment area of Universal called City Walk. It’s full of the most amazing restaurants with various kinds of food. We’re not talking hot dogs and churros (although they have those too, of course). We went to one of the newer and certainly most unique restaurants called Cowfish. It’s the first and only sushi burger bar, where we tried their signature creation called the “Burgushi”. It’s a bento box with sushi, a mini-cheese burger with pickle, sweet potato fries, Thai cucumbers, and edamame. I chose spicy tuna as my sushi and it was fabulous. It was all fabulous.

It was such an amazing evening, and I was so glad to be able to spend it with Mary Jo and Tina, two amazing and inspiring women, who I’m so happy I’ve gotten to know through the coming together of our families through Gill and Phil’s marriage. I am so grateful to Tina for arranging this special evening for us and for taking her back to work on a weekend.