Epcot Food and Wine Festival

Mark has attended this event two different years. Evey attended it every chance she got during her months here working at the Disney Wide World of Sports as an Athletic Trainer Intern. Lowell and I had never been here, but now only Lowell still has to try to get here. I want to create a new holiday for my kids, "The Epcot Food and Wine Festival Holiday." It will be every year in October, and I'm hoping it will turn out when the Maryland teachers have a Friday off so Lowell and Emily could fly down for a three day weekend. I'm sure Evey and Eric could find the time then as well. How much fun would that be for all six of us to eat our way around World Showcase!

We went there for about four hours. It was so much fun. Of course, when you don't eat meat, there are a lot fewer food options, but there were still plenty. We plan to go about three or four times total, so we didn't have to stuff ourselves with every food in one day. That was a good thing!

There are 28 pavilions from countries around the world. Today we hit only a few. First we went to Greece and had a griddled cheese bread. It was simply amazing and probably our favorite food from the whole day. I also ordered the Greek yogurt strawberry parfait. Mark got a white Greek wine with his. From there, we walked to Canada and got the salmon with barley salad. The salmon was wonderful, but I didn't care for the cold barley salad because it had too much vinegar in it for my taste. While there, we did some shopping in the Canadian gift shop.

Next was the United Kingdom. I shopped in several shops at the UK, but we also went to the Ireland pavilion for the fantastic cheese platter that included a wonderful apple chutney and a slab of a thick black bread. I had the warm lava cake as well. The only thing that made eating these foods challenging was that it was raining pretty heavily at the time! We felt silly because we had not taken our rain ponchos nor did we bring a backpack even though we knew we planned to do shopping. Sigh. We felt like rubes.

From England we moved to France. Mark got a merlot, which he didn't care for, and I got a cosmos slushie that was sensational. The rain stopped, and we sat in the sun enjoying our drinks before heading to Belgium for the waffles with berry compote and whipped cream. Unbelievably delicious. I also got a little box of chocolate truffles to take home for later. Although they sell a wonderful sounding Godiva chocolate liqueur iced coffee, I decided to try that another day.

I shopped in Japan and Mexico and then we headed home. There are 28 food pavilions altogether, so when we return on Tuesday we plan to hit several more delicious ones. Hopefully, we will also come back Wednesday and Friday! By then we should have tried everything we want to try. For vegetarians, there are many more desserts and drinks than main dishes, so we have to space them out! South African has a vegetarian entree called "bunny chow" that we are looking forward to trying. There is also mahi mahi in Brazil and another cheese assortment and fondue in the special cheese pavilion near Germany for some more main dishes to have. I'll let you know how they go.

Another special treat today was seeing the new Chinese acrobat show. This particular group has just recently come to Epcot, so we were very excited to see that our timing was perfect for catching their show today on our way home. What a fantastic day!

Now we are home watching a Disney movie called "Victory Through Air Power." How appropriate to watch a Disney movie after spending the afternoon at WDW. Mark is cooking a nice grilled salmon with baked potato and salad for dinner. I walked several miles today, so I'm hoping those calories got worn off!