Wednesday 3rd April 2013

Peter-ism of the day: "Is it true your brother likes my sister ... like that?"

Picture of the day (forgot to take my camera so it'll have to be this one from the web):

The Orlando Florida Temple

Thing unexpectedly found to have sugar in it of the day: Sliced ham

Hellen's Version

Coughed the whole time I was in the Temple. Taco Bell was a disappointment and it rained on our game of mini-golf.

Everyone Else Version

Today was a day for Roderic and I to spend together, in part as consolation for his having his birthday on a plane on the way here. We went to the Orlando Florida Temple first, since it's only ten minutes from our resort. It's a very big and extremely beautiful Temple, subtly decorated with symbols of the area, including intricately woven palm leaves depicted in gold tones across the ceiling. Since we both have bad coughs we opted not to do an endowment session for fear of spoiling it for everyone else, and instead we participated in sealings which is a quicker and more informal ordinance. As predicted I started coughing, but  as ever in the Temple we were well looked after and people appeared with cough sweets and water pretty quickly.

From there we went to Walmart and Boyd's LDS Books. The Walmart was smaller than the one near us (still much bigger than Morrison's though) and, dare I say it, really lovely. Still Walmart but ... nice, somehow. Beautifully neat and well laid out, much like the rest of Windermere (the area where the Temple is situated). We found we loved Windermere and would love to live there someday; it's the "posh end" of Orlando.

Taco Bell for lunch because we really liked Mexican food last time we were in America. Also since then the first three Taco Bell restaurants have opened in the UK, one of them in Basildon only ten minutes away from us. So we were quite disappointed to find that the US Taco Bell isn't anything like as good as the UK version. Mexican fries are the best!

Suzy had managed to make contact with an old friend who had emigrated to Florida twenty years ago, so we were excited to welcome her and her two sons to the joint apartment for dinner and a round of Pirates Mini-Golf.  It started raining as we were playing but, hardy Brits that we are, we carried on anyway. Until the thunder, at which point (possibly remembering last week’s hurricane) we returned the clubs and balls and headed back home pretty sharpish. Once there Suzy and her friend were able to renew their friendship and catch up on news from the intervening twenty years over  pizza and key lime pie.