Day 5 -- Around The World (EPCOT)

Day 5 (Wednesday) was another GORGEOUS day! Sunny and about 70 degrees, so we decided to take a trip around the world -- World Showcase
aka: the "back half" of EPCOT.

Beautiful landscaping of Mickey from Fantasia

First, though, we popped in to "Club Cool" -- a neat little shop sponsored by Coca-Cola -- which features FREE tastes of soft drinks from all over the world!
My favorites were from Mozambique & Germany.
The ones from Italy and Mexico tasted like medicine! Blech.

Performance in front of the America Pavilion

Natasha with a camel I would LOVE to own in the Morocco Pavilion :)

Nadia and I in front of the fountain in "Morocco"

The beautiful architecture of "Italy"

We had lunch in the Germany Pavilion at "Biergarten"

Clay & Raisha in Biergarten waiting for the "Oktoberfest" show to begin!
Raisha was not a fan of the food here & she thought the sauerkraut made the place smell "stinky."

Nadia wasn't really interested in the show; she just wanted to finish her book!

Natasha being "snacked on" (yet, again) by a hungry lion in the China Pavilion. ;)

Overall, it was a great day... especially since Raisha got to meet one of her very favorite characters: Donald Duck in the Mexico Pavilion

Some thoughts about EPCOT:
We made a point of starting in Canada and working our way counter-clockwise around the "world" which hosts representations of 11 different countries.
Previously, we have always begun in Mexico and we usually peter out about the time we get to France, so I was curious what we had been missing...
Not much, actually.

No offense at all to the people or their countries, but this half of the "world" was far less interesting (for us) than the other side. For one, there were mostly only films and shows geared toward older guests. The educational value would have been OK for Nadia & Natasha, but a 4-year-old is only going to sit through so much of that. Plus, in the Canada Pavilion, you have to STAND for the whole show! Not something our tired, aching feet were inclined to do!

The United Kingdom Pavilion had an interesting toy shop and I bought some wonderful hand cream from the "Scottish" shop, but that was about it.

In the France Pavilion, we decided to have a snack of various pastries since that is one of the things they are famous for. They were good -- especially the profiteroles (cream puffs) -- but I think the Kringla Og Bakeri in the Norway Pavilion has them beat with their fruit tarts (shortcake crust!) and (my personal favorite) Schoolbread -- A bready pastry filled with vanilla creme and covered in toasted coconut... Mmmmm

It's probably a good thing the Norway Pavilion is nowhere near here... I could definitely hurt myself with that Schoolbread!

Here, a man feeds a rather tame (wild) squirrel pieces of his schoolbread.
See? Even the squirrels agree it's delicious!