I’m 21! : Storytime

Happy birthday to me! Yay! This Sunday I officially turned 21 years young, what what!? This is the first birthday in a long time that I actually feel excited to be a year older. I don’t know quite what it is, it certainly isn’t the drinking thing, we’ve been drinking in the Dominican and our parents are all very open to letting us do whatever we want to do. Maybe it’s that I can fully take part in the festivals, like the Epcot Food and Wine festival, or that I can look at a drink menu and actually order something, I don’t know…

We started the weekend on Friday, which we had off because Veteran’s Day (a quick shout out to anyone who has served or is serving in the US military, we have only the utmost respect for your dedication to this country), and we went to Magic Kingdom with one of my childhood besties. She moved to Orlando our freshman year of high school and we used to travel between the two cities all the time, now we only talk a few times a year but I love it when I get to see her.

Magic Kingdom was filming for the holiday specials they air on Disney and the Travel channel (yeah those ‘Live’ buttons are fake) so it was jam packed. I got a “Happy Birthday” button, we always get a button when we go. Disney tip: Those “First Trip” and “I’m Celebrating” etc… buttons can be found in pretty much any brick and mortar shop and some of the wandering cast members carry them in their pockets. They are free and a great way to remember the occasion!

We hung out, mostly just catching up, at Cosmic Ray’s. The lady handing out food gave me a free chocolate cake for my birthday (another cool thing about the buttons, automatic perks)! Yum!

After Magic Kingdom my friend had to leave for work and we went over to Epcot, which was insanely busy, for a minute and then headed to Disney Springs (formerly Downtown Disney) and went to my favorite specialty bath store, Basin. Basin is a lot like Lush in the sense they sell bath bombs, soap, scrubs, lotion, etc, and it’s all natural. However, unlike any Lush I’ve been in, you can watch the people make the soap bars or press the bath bombs (is bathbomb one word or two?). My favorite scent from Basin is ‘Love’ so I got myself a few of those bombs, the salt, and I picked up some other goodies just to have in the house.

While we were in Disney Springs we spotted my favorite chocolate shop, The Ganachery. I was hesitant to go to this store when it first opened, I’m not a big fan of ganache, or most soft chocolates, but this is heaven. They offer a variety of flavors, our favorite is the salted caramel! This store also seasonally sells Stollen (a classic German treat).

On Saturday we lazed around, we didn’t leave our hotel room until almost two-thirty. We went from the hotel to Ikea, most of our furniture came from Ikea, we’re a little obsessed (Jacksonville is getting one soon!). We walked around there for about an hour, found some cute glass jars for decorating our office, and we picked up another silicone ice cube tray for Lucy’s treats. After, Eduardo surprised me with dinner at Texas De Brazil, a Brazilian steakhouse. If you’ve never been, you need to go, it’s incredible. (We were so distracted by the meat we didn’t get any pictures of it.)

After dinner we went bowling with my friend in Disney Springs. The bartender poured me a Birthday Cake shot at midnight and I proceeded to down a bowl of blueberry lemonade which is blueberry vodka, lemonade, sprite, and who knows. We made it safely back to the hotel where I passed the f*ck out.

On Sunday, my actual birthday, we went to Epcot where we ate a few things from the Food and Wine festival. I only got one alcoholic beverage, that was the Hard Rootbeer float, Eduardo hates rootbeer but we ended up sharing this drink. We ate carrot cake (it looked like a cinnamon roll),beer braised beef, a liquid nitrogen truffle *dead*, Brazilian cheese bread, and then we made our way home.

We had birthday dinner at Applebee’s with my family where we played with Snapchat, ate some food, and had a good time. All in all it was a great birthday. Be on the lookout for my post about what the best boyfriend ever got me for my birthday, trust me, it’s worth its own post!

Xx