Orlando Trip - Day 1

Pig, motorcycle, BBQ...how can it not be good?
view into the Villa from the front door
pool view from our balcony

my new friends, the cranes!

I haven't quite figured out how to blog about our trip last week to Orlando. I took about 500 pictures and, of course, I'd LOVE to share every single one of them with you. But, since that isn't really feasible, I've decided to post about each day with a few pictures from that day. Maybe when I have a little extra time I'll put together a slideshow of some of the other pictures. Anyway, to start with Day 1:

We left Columbia around 6:30 on Monday morning and stopped in Orangeburg for breakfast. According to GPS we should have arrived at our Villa around 1:30. However, when we got to St. Augustine a billboard with two words on it caught our eyes --- Gucci and Outlet. So, we stopped and spent a while shopping. Five pairs of shoes (2 for Glenn, 2 for me and 1 for Ben) and one hat (for Ben) later we were back on the road with one more stop at Daytona Pigstand BBQ (how can you go wrong with a pig riding a motorcycle?!?!) for a very yummy lunch.

We finally got to the ChampionsGate Omni around 4. After checking in we headed to the check out our "home". It was a beautiful, and large, villa that overlooked a private Villa pool and Greg Norman designed golf course. It had two bedrooms and baths (one had a loverly jacuzzi tub), living room, dining room, kitchen, laundry room and den. All in all there were four TVs. It made quite a nice home away from home. Ben suggested that we stay and live there he liked it so much. While Glenn ran a few errands for us, Ben and I unpacked, stocked the kitchen (we were planning to eat most of our meals at "home"), explored the property and hung out with the cranes. They were beautiful and soooo neat.

ChampionsGate had three pools. One for the Villas, a "quiet" pool and then the big kid-friendly, family pool. It was huge and had wading pools, water basketball, fountains, a restaurant, a slide, a beach (yes a beach!) and a lazy river. We spend A LOT of time here as you can imagine. The resort also had volleyball, playground, basketball courts, an arcade, a deli, stores, restaurants, two golf courses, a golf academy and putting green...whew! There was plenty to do here without ever leaving the property.

Our first day was spent driving, shopping, settling in and resting. Tuesday was going to be an early morning and a long, busy day.....we are heading off to Disney World!!