A Tourist in Orlando

Happy Thursday everyone. You know what day it is: crazy story day.

So as you’ve probably heard already, I spent the last weekend with The Wellborn Hotel in downtown Orlando. I was pretty much raised in Orlando and I can quite positively say I’ve only been downtown a real handful of times. These days I’m not much of a goer-outer and I like to be in bed at a reasonable hour.

The other day I had a friend ask me if I was a cat how many lives I would have left, and I thought that was a real example of my life. You know, I’m closer to 30 than I would like to be and I just can’t bounce back from a night of drinking like I used to.

That being said, when you’re playing tourist in your own city you make some exceptions.

My two friends Madison and Stephanie came with me for the weekend. Now, for some reference, they can all hang a lot better than I can.

Like I told you, we went to dinner on Friday then to Mather’s, had a pretty normal night out in bed by 3am, nothing too exciting to report.

Y’all are probably like, why am I reading this but I promise it gets so much better.

The next morning we went to nurse our hangovers in bottomless mimosas at Domu. I had big plans for today, I wanted to ride Lime bikes around the city and take pictures but you know, bottomless mimosas get in the way of everything.

So every good story starts with, “so we had bottomless mimosas”…

Anyway, I obviously didn’t know where to put that line in this story so I awkwardly threw it in there but hey, we’re gonna go with it.

After Domu, which I had pretty high expectations for and it was a smidge disappointing but I will give it another chance, we thought it be a brilliant idea to go thrifting, buy plants, and drink more beer at a brewery.

The brewery was brewing things and it smelled pretty terrible so we thought why not try the new Sun Room next to Guest House. It was closed until 8. But we don’t go home, no no, we get another drink, to which we decide to have a full blown photo shoot inside the Guest house and I would like to say those pictures turned out great but I’ll let you decide.

We had dinner reservations at this restaurant in Winter Park called Prato, so we headed back to the hotel to get dressed, take some more pictures of the hotel and then head to dinner.

We thought it would be a great idea to go up to the bar to have a drink and apps before dinner. Right as we got our first drink Madison quickly pointed at the server and said “Another round!” he looked at her quite confused and she repeated “Another round! Yep, that’s right, another round!” I honestly did not think he took her seriously, but he was new so he walked behind the bar and started doing his thing.

About 5 minutes goes by, I’m editing a picture, Stephanie is talking to our other friend Jamie who joined us for the evening, and Madison has disappeared. She has walked up to the bar to get another glass of wine. By this point all of us forgot we ordered another round until, right as she sat down, the server brought us four more drinks.

Confused, Madison looks at him and goes “Well, ok.” then she looks at us and goes “1, 2, 3, chug!” Don’t worry we didn’t let her chug her wine, but we also didn’t let her leave the table without finishing her three glasses, so really we take full responsibility for the next events.

If you can’t tell, we are feeling pretty good.

We get to Prato and they take us to the very last table in the back. Some people would be disappointed in a table like this, but I think this is God’s way of making sure we actually got to eat instead of getting kicked out for our shenanigans.

I should probably say that Prato is an uppidy place, that farm-to-table, pinky out, kinda place. Madison is wearing a pretty low cut, wrap across shirt.

You’ll need to know that.

Madison and Jamie were talking when Jamie politely told Madison to pull her shirt up, she said “does this make you uncomfortable?” then pulled her shirt even lower. Jamie of course turned very red and scolded her. I, of course, started to die laughing, and just as she did that the server walked up. He handled it like a champ because she asked him the same question and he politely said “No, not at all.” Smart man.

The best part was there was a server who was standing at the side work table right behind ours who literally refused to move the entire time we were there for fear he might miss a glimpse!

Needless to say, I think we should have gone home?

We kinda did. We went back to the hotel where Madison and Jamie went off to bed, and Stephanie and I continued our night out.

We ran into about 25 people we knew from high school before we decided to call it a night as well.

We came back super late (just kidding, all of this happened before 9am and we were in bed by midnight).

We flopped back in bed and woke up the next morning getting to recant the entire evening to our friends.

I think we did right by Orlando.

Yes, I did get her permission to tell this story, and as always, there is information left out to protect all of us from our grandmothers who read this blog, but I do hope you enjoyed.