Welcome to our first ‘Review of the Week’. We will not be posting these on a regular weekly schedule as, believe us, our lives are not interesting enough to do that! However, when we have something fun happening or a particularly busy week we would love to share it with you all!
A couple of weeks ago we took an impromptu trip to Orlando, Florida on a top secret mission that we will be sharing with you in the new year. Until then let us fill you in on some of the fun activities, eating and shopping we did while we were there.
We set off on Saturday morning at 10am and had a great flight in which we watched Jurassic World (fab movie!) and The Age of Adeline (excellent film, many tears were shed!). We touched down at 3.30pm at Orlando International Airport and were whisked off to our Hotel, Radisson at Celebration. We had every intention of having a night out but the truth is we were so tired that we fell into bed super early, exhausted from a busy day travelling
Epcot Food and Wine Festival
We had a full itinerary for Sunday! We purchased tickets at the gate and headed into Epcot Food and Wine Festival at around 10am. We enjoyed the obligatory Starbucks (Christmas drinks are now available!) before the stands opened and 11am we started to eat our way around the world! Wow! We had some amazing food! We have inserted a sample of what we managed to consume above so that you can get an idea of just how much we managed to get through! If you are in Orlando during Food and Wine Festival we cannot recommend this enough as it was a really great day out. We really enjoyed the food we sampled and it was so lovely to wander around Epcot World Showcase in the November sunshine and pick out the food we wanted to taste. We especially enjoyed the cheese and wine trio at the end of the day! Once we had eaten our fill we headed back to our hotel for a nap as we had a very scary evening ahead….
Universal Halloween Horror Nights
We purchased tickets in advance for Halloween Horror Nights (HHN) as the night we attended was the very last night and we didn’t want to risk missing out. We arrived about 45 minutes before the gates opened and joined the line with lots of suitably dressed guests! As the park opened fireworks were set off and we heard chainsaws jump to life! Halloween Horror Nights is an annual event at Universal Studios in both Orlando and California. The park is divided into ‘Scare Zones’ – or themed areas where scarily dressed actors frighten this life out of you (both with and without chainsaws!) They also have themed ‘Houses’ which are based on both popular horror films and original ideas. This year they included Freddie vs. Jason, The Walking Dead, Insidious, The Purge and an original house themed around the 25th Anniversary of HHN. We managed to see every scare zone and walk through 6/9 of the themed houses before jet lag got the better of us and we were forced to stagger home to bed dreaming of zombies….zzzzz
Shopping Craziness at Sephora
No trip to the USA would be complete without a visit to Sephora We already had a list of items that we wanted to check out and of course once you start browsing you are always seduced by other pretty items you decide you can’t live without! We were excited to see that some of the holiday sets were already released and we picked up the Sephora Favorites Superstars $75 and Sephora Give Me More Lip $59 (apologies that we are unable to link to this but it does not currently appear to be available online) .We love these sets as they offer fantastic value for money and are a great way to try products without having to splash out on the full size item.
After the 'snapped in the suitcase Anastacia Brow Wiz debacle' of Summer 2015 we invested in a new and intact Brow Wiz and kept it in its box for travel purposes this time (in case of snappage! ) We also managed to get hold of the coveted (and pretty much sold out) Becca Shimmering Skin Perfector Jaclyn Hill Palette $49. This is a limited edition palette with Pearl/ Champagne Pop/ Blushed Copper highlighters, get it fast as it is sure to be popular! We were also delighted to be able to get our hands on the new Hourglass Ambient Lighting Edit Palette which is sooo beautiful! It is available in the UK from Space NK and although it is a little pricey at £65, in our opinion it is worth it as it has been used every single day since its purchase!
We will be dedicating a whole post to some of our new Sephora purchases soon including photographs and reviews once we have tried and tested them for you all! Watch this space for details!
An Epic Universal Orlando Day
To finish off our incredibly busy week we decided to dedicate a whole day to visiting the Universal Parks - Universal Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios the day before we flew home. After an early lunch at Bread Box we started off in Islands of Adventure which was so much quieter that it was in August when we last visited! We rode some of our very favourite attractions including Spiderman and Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey before jumping on the Hogwarts Express to Universal Studios and riding Escape from Gringotts. We couldn't leave without paying a visit to Mummy and Transformers (another two of our fave attractions!). We left in the early evening totally exhausted after a packed day of having fun!
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| Universal Orlando Resort |
We spent our final morning at the newly rebranded Disney Springs (AKA Downtown Disney) where we had our traditional final day lunch at Earl of Sandwich and a quick look at how the Disney Springs building work was progressing since we last visited. We always seem to end up there on our final day as it is a great place to have a leisurely wander and lunch before heading to the airport.
By early afternoon the time had come for us to head back to Orlando International Airport to return our hire car and start the long journey home.
We had an amazing visit to Orlando and despite only being there for one week on this trip we managed to cram a whole lot into our 7 days! We hope you have enjoyed reading about our visit and we look forward to sharing our Sephora purchases with you very soon.
