We awoke fairly early on Monday, as newly married folk, in our spacious Grand Floridian bed. Angela can never sleep late on vacation, especially not in Disney, although she was nicer to me than she was on our previous vacation, when she got up at sunriseSUNRISE, as in dawn, as in 5 AMready to go play.
Originally, we had intended to have a joint family breakfast, but my parents opted out at the last second (okay, at the Dessert Party), so only six of us dined at the Grand Floridian Café. I finally got to have my Mickey waffle.
Stock photo of Mickey waffle (you think I paused long enough to take a picture?):
I was very jealous of Christopher, who at 4 was allowed to order off the kids menu. His Mickey waffle came with edible Mickey confetti. Although I did get a ton of whipped cream
. Angelas mom, sister, father, and Angela all ordered weird adult-like breakfasts, with eggs and cheese and what-have-you.
After wed finished our lovely repast, we said goodbye to her family/my in-laws, and headed back to our room to get ready for the day. Wed purposefully left Monday open, because we assumed wed be tired from the wedding and we didnt want to over-schedule. This was actually a very smart move on our parts; we were too exhausted to explore any park, and it was far more pleasant not to have to rush.
We decided to head down to Downtown Disney, easily our mutual favorite part of the whole World. One Magical bus ride later, we were ready to stroll the promenade, taking care that Angela not hit her head this time. We mostly ambled around, shopping a little. We had to resize our watches (I have exceedingly thin wrists, and even Angelas was a little loose), and of course buy more Disney paraphernalia.
We tried on hats:
And explored Legoland:
We also decided that the woman at the art store on the Cirque side of Downtown Disney needed to hear all the details of our wedding. She totally understood the need for a ping pong table; she wanted a Batman cake at hers. I dont know how we got on the topic of weddings, but suffice it to say that we stayed in the store for almost an hour reminiscing about the past days events.
Very sadly, we didn't get our Ghiradelli sundae or our usual chocolate peanut butter apple. When we first got to Downtown, we'd just had breakfast, and by the time lunch rolled around, we were in the mood for "real food," as opposed to more cake. Not that I don't love cake frosted with more cake, but I hadn't had a real meal in a few days. My body craved vegetables. So we went to the Cuban place, which has a nice vegetarian plate and nicer Mojitos. We didnt want to eat too much, though, because we were already nearing time to prep for our magnificent Victoria and Alberts dinner.
Even if Angela and I have all day to prepare for something, or all week, or a two and a half year engagement, we will inevitably end up rushing at the last second (see TR, Day 0). So of course we ended up tearing through our bags to find what we needed, breaking the world record for fastest shower, and dashing off to V & As three minutes before our reservation time (thank heavens our hotel room was only a few yards away).
We did stop to take pictures for all of your sakes:
Remember these dresses? Except I think we look a little more exhausted this time around.
Victoria & Alberts was lovely. I highly recommend it for all honeymooners; how often do you get to enjoy such high-end, specialized service prepared by a four-star chef? And considering we were in Disney World, the price wasnt that bad. (When you spend $5 on a popsicle, you lose pricing perspective, I think). There were very few people in the dining room, and the waiter lavished attention on us, pouring more water the second wed finished taking a sip, attending to our every whim. And the food was wonderful, all artfully prepared and delicious.
Im so glad they give you the menu to take home, because otherwise I would totally have forgotten a few of the courses (there are eight, for goodness sakes!). We dined on:
A tasting of spring melons for our amuse bouche. This course literally involved four bites of different melons, one slushed, one sliced, and the other two prepared in some ingenious way. Angela and I opted to split the wine flight (they werent really supposed to let us do that, but I think the waiter took pity on us because we were young and obviously not used to dining amid such finery), so we each drank half a glass of Brut Champagne. At this point, we were convinced that given the small portions, wed still be starving by the time we left. How wrong we were.
The next course was hearts of palm and fennel salad with garbanzo beans, beets and Manni olive oil. Now, I generally dislike hearts of palm, fennel, garbanzo beans, and beets, but I was determined to try everything put in front of me, and it was good. I also liked the Cantina Del Taburno Falanghina, Campania 2005 (not that I remember if it was red or white, but Im sure it was tasty).
Our third course was Angelas favorite, not including dessert: mushroom tortellini with trumpet royal, hedgehog mushrooms and black truffles. Angela doesnt really eat vegetables (shes what we like to call a carb-etarian), but she does like mushrooms, and I think she had them in some form or another every day of our Disney trip.
With three bite size plates of food the only thing between alcohol and our bare stomachs, the Domaine Vocoret & Fils Chablis put us both over the edge in terms of tipsiness. Angela, as is her custom, had ravaged the bread (brioche, baguette, and a multigrain roll, I think), leaving crumbs strewn across the fine linens. Our waiter had that neat crumb-picker-upper (I need to get one for the house), and his little smirk told me that he hadnt ever needed to use it as much. So to make ourselves seem even more mature and sophisticated, we spent the entire meal giggling. I cant imagine what would have happened had we actually opted for a full wine flight eachthey would have had to carry us out of there, no mean feat after we were done with the final course.
After the mushrooms came my fave (again, minus dessert): tempura squash blossom with vegetable ratatouille and miniature summer squashes, accompanied by Rosenthal Chardonnay. Every time I see baby squash in Wegmans, I think about replicating this dish, but it hasnt happened yet. Our entrée followed: Zellwood corn risotto, potato-turnip gratin, and petite French lentils. Oddly enough, Angela doesnt like corn, so I enjoyed this course much more than she did, although we both loved the gratin (because it tasted like fancy mashed potatoes to our undeveloped palates). I traded Ange some of my Pinot Noir for her corn risotto, so we were both happy, full, and slightly drunk.
The meat menu has more options than the vegetarian, which suited us just fine. We had a hard time picking when we did have to choose. For course #6, my new wife went with the Colston Basset Stilton, Monte Enebro and Pierre Robert cheese plate with Port wine, while I ordered the white chocolate gelato with micro mint and tableside shavings with Moscato. It actually wasnt that hard to pick: Im incapable of passing up chocolate/I dont like cheese, and it made sense for Angela to get something different.
Oh, dessert. Yummy, delicious, perfect dessert. I dont know how or when we passed the satiation point, but we were both stuffed. No matter. There was no way I was going to let my Tanzanian chocolate pyramid, Hawaiian Kona chocolate soufflé and Peruvian chocolate ice cream and puff pastry go to waste. Why anyway would select any other dessert is beyond me. It was to die for. It was worth paying $125 just for this dish alone (okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but it really was delicious). Angela was boring, and went with the berry gateau with mango yogurt panna cotta. She said that she loved hers, but it clearly could not have been as good as mine. Three chocolate delicacies on one plate vs. something with fruit and yogurt? As if theres any question! She didnt even manage to finish hers, and asked for a take out box.
Our waiter brought out the Celebes coffee, which is brewed through a cool filtration system on the table. I dont really understand how the process works, but it has to do with air pressure building up from the boiling water underneath the coffee grinds. However they did it, it was great coffee. We also enjoyed the friandise, tiny bites of petit fours or dried fruits. I dont know how I managed to eat any more, but I love little concentrated sweets. They gave us our fruit and nut bread to take home along with Angelas leftover gateau, and we rolled ourselves out of the restaurant.
On our way out, we decided to switch our Japanese reservation for Tuesday night for one at Citricos (it looked so pretty, and we figured we could have Japanese anywhere), then stumbled back to our room to catch the Magic Kingdom fireworks. We also saw the end of a lightshow that I presume is performed solely for the guests of the MK resorts. It involved, I kid you not, an American flag, a dragon, and very tinny music. Magnificent.
Exhausted, filled with food, and very, very happy, we dozed off, visions of Epcot dancing in our heads.
when you get a minute... we're all hangin' off our seats, girl! lol
And this past trip I have a picture of me wearing the same princess hat and my middle son wearing the cutest Mickey ears and it's one of my favorite ones too....hats are so fun!! 
Can't wait to hear the rest of your faux honeymoon!! 
What do you mean by "faux" honeymoon??
Thanks for a lovely visit to V & A. You've now made me want to try it and I wasn't interested till now 
