Shopping in Orlando

The first day of our vacation to Orlando we spent shopping! We first went to Orlando Prime Outlets - we spent quite a bit of time here just looking around and mostly window shopping. We had to keep remembering that we had to find some way to get all of our purchases back in our luggage to take home. I was in heaven though walking into a Dooney and Bourke outlet store and seeing 30%, 40% and 50% off signs! I think if I would have been by myself, I would have gone a little crazy. But, I managed to make it out of there without buying a single thing. The most stuff we bought at the outlet mall was in the Harley-Davidson outlet store. We did go to The Florida Mall after that, where I bought a pair of really comfy sandals at Nordstrom and we checked out M&M's World. This one is not near as large as the one in Las Vegas, but now I just need to go to the one in New York and I will have been to them all! After we were done shopping there, we went to the Mall at Millenia to eat at The Cheesecake Factory. We didn't do any shopping at this mall.

Day 2 we spent at Epcot. The World Showcase at Epcot is very neat. We ate lunch at the Biergarten in Germany and had an amazing buffet of German food. I collect shot glasses, so I bought a shot glass in Germany that looks like a beer stein - it is very cool. Also in Epcot, we purchased a shot glass in Itlay, fans in China (and they even wrote our names in Chinese on them), tiny sombreros and Jose Cuervo chocolates in Mexico.

The next day we spent at Magic Kingdom. This was the most amazing place and even brought tears to my eyes when the "Time of Your Life" song was playing during the parade and everyone was dancing around. We started out the morning looking through some of the shops. I found this adorable Dooney and Bourke small purse with Minnie Mouse on it! I told Ted that he could get that for me for an early birthday present. We decided we would stop back before leaving so we didn't have to carry it around all day. Throughout the day, we bought several things - Mickey ear hats with my nieces names on them, Mickey ears for both Ted and myself, a Tinkerbell doll for our goddaughter who loves Tinkerbell. At the end of the day, we got all of our other stuff in the gift shop - a Minnie Mouse doll with cap & gown for Ted's sister who is graduating this year and a Magic Kingdom shot glass. I got a scrapbook and a paper edgers that makes Mickey ears! :) And of course, the Minnie Mouse Dooney & Bourke purse!
The next day we spent at Universal Studios. The most of what we purchased here were t-shirts, some miscellaneous souvenirs and then some stuff at the Hard Rock store. Of course I had to get a shot glass at Hard Rock because I've collected them from several other Hard Rock's that I (or someone else I know) have visited. So far I have: New York, Washington DC, Barcelona, Minneapolis, Phoenix, San Francisco and now Orlando!

The following day we went to Sea World. Here I purchased 2 shot glasses. On our way back to our resort, we stopped at a discount gift shop that we had driven by several times and have wanted to check out. We found several things here. We bought some beach towels to use the next day when we go to the beach, t-shirts, a photo album and some other misc. souvenirs.

The last day of our vacation we drove to Cocoa Beach. We parked the car in the free parking (for once we didn't have to pay for parking) at the Ron Jon Surf Shop and walked across the road to the beach. We had an awesome day at the beach, got quite sunburned and met a drunk guy that wouldn't leave us alone. After we were done at the beach we went back and did some shopping at the Ron Jon Surf Shop - got some t-shirts, jewelry and souvenirs.

When we got to the airport the next day, it was evident that we had done too much shopping - both of our suitcases were over the 50 pound limit. We had to go through our suitcases in the middle of the airport and try to shove more stuff into our already-full carry-on bags. We ended up getting it to the 50 pound mark and all was OK. We had a fabulous time on our trip and I can't wait to go back someday!