Whew. What a great day! :)

Whew. Today was a great day! We had a ton of fun! We started the day off with breakfast. The hotel has a continental breakfast (not free) but they also had a breakfast buffet at Islands Restaurant in the hotel...since the continental breakfast wasn't free, we went for the buffet. Mmmmm YUMMY! It reminded us a lot of when we were in Hawaii because we had a buffet everyday and the food was very similar. Anyways, here's a picture from breakfast.

From there we headed to Universal Studios for the day. Here's some pictures from around our hotel on the walk to the water taxi to get over to Universal.

(Some weird flower that I thought was neat)

Our biggest complaint when we went to Hawaii was that we didn't have enough pictures of us together...so we made sure to try and get lots of pics of us together (of course at Universal and Disney they have those people around that will take the pictures for you but you have to pay for them...but we decided we would bite the bullet and just get them). Anyways, the big Universal globe (from the pictures yesterday) is right before the entrance into Universal so we had our picture taken there. Unfortunately they're actual pictures so I can't scan them in, but here's a picture of the picture. lol

Ok, so from there we got to the entrance to Universal. Pretty cool!

So as we were getting ready to go into the park, guess who comes walking out...Mr. Homer Simpson himself (Jim is a big Simpson's fan. LOL). So Jim waited in line to get his picture taken with him.

While walking through the park we saw lots of peeps...Scooby Doo, Madagascar, Curious George and the Man with the Yellow Hat (Jim says that's somebody's name???), Woody Woodpecker, the rest of the Simpson family (Marge, Bart & Lisa), some pharaohs or something from The Mummy and that's probably about it (until you read below).

Universal is pretty cool. It's all set up to look like you're walking downtown in a city. Our first ride was...guess...The Simpsons Ride. LOL! It was really cool!

After that we went on a few more rides (Men In Black, Jaws, Twister, Disaster, etc). The Mummy was the BEST ride. It was great.

Jim just HAD to have his picture by the train and the DeLorean from Back to the Future II.

We ate lunch at some Irish restaurant and then went to Shrek 4D which was really cool. Afterwards we had our picture taken with Donkey and Shrek. No idea why we wanted our picture with them, but Donkey was hillllllarious. Too funny. Here are pictures of those pictures. LOL

We left Universal and went back to the hotel to take a swim in the humongous pool. Here's a pic from looking out our hotel room window. We have a garden view room. The shelter on the left side is where the luau is held on Tuesdays and Sundays! Sweet!

We went to Emeril's restaurant for dinner. We both got the same thing...a 14 oz. NY Strip Steak with a homemade Italian sausage, twice baked potato, asparaus, fried onion and an escargot brandelaise. We both got the escargot brandelaise (the sauce) on the side. We weren't too sure about escargot (I mean seriously...snails???) The steak was to die for. Honestly, best steak I've ever had. The asparagus, great. Fried onions, holy cow good. And escargot? GOOD! I can't believe I tried it. Yes ME! Who a few years ago wouldn't eat anything that was remotely out of the box...Yes, I ate escargot tonight. Although as I was eating it I kept thinking...awwww my poor snails in my fishtank...that's what I'm eating. LOL For dessert we got a carmelized white chocolate toffee crunch cheesecake with hazelnut shortbread and butterscotch sauce. Again, YUM! The actual cheesecake was better than The Cheesecake Factory...the extra tastes of the cheesecake (toffee, white choc, etc.) wasn't as good. But overall, definitely right there with Cheesecake Factory. We might have to eat beans and rice for the rest of the time we're gone, but it was worth it!!! :)

Tomorrow we're headed to Epcot Center. One of the best things about staying on the Universal Resort was that we had an Express Pass...just show our room ticket at the ride entrance and we get to go to the front of the line! So one ride's wait was like 30 min...we were on in 2. It was SWEET! But we won't have that at Epcot since that's at Disney...stupid lines. Here's hoping it's not a busy day. hahahaha!!

Anyways, until tomorrow...