A day of errands

Friday, we had made appointments to see a dermatologist in Clermont, so after participating in the "Walk Fit" class in the recreation center at the campground, we headed up that way in late morning. It took a while to get both of our appointments completed, but everything came out okay.

After stopping for lunch, we headed further east with plans to stop at a few stores in Orlando.

The first stop was at Carhartt Factory Store at the Orlando Premium Outlets.

The route to get there was **weird** -- we were coming from the northeast down Florida's turnpike (the part coming from top center in this screen capture -- link to Google maps) -- we got off the turnpike and the outlet mall was right below the exit ramp, but, oh no, you couldn't get there from here... we looped around heading back up toward the north, then a full loop to momentarily get onto I-4, then another full loop on surface streets to cross over I-4, and another loop around to get into the outlet mall parking lot. But... that was just the beginning, then there were **no** parking places at the outlet mall. People were driving around, following pedestrians as they walked from the mall to their cars. There were some pay parking areas that had available space ($3/hour!). We ended up driving behind the mall (on the side next to I-4), where there were very few parking spaces, but we happened upon an available one. Then we found out why no one was wanting to park there... all the back doors of the stores were there, but no public entries! We found a propped open door that allowed us to walk through a long corridor that eventually led to the "inside" of the mall (the interior of the mall is all open-air, so it wasn't really "inside").

Thankfully, it happened that the corridor put us pretty near the Carhartt store, so it did not take a lot of additional time to find it. We were able to find a few shirts for Carl, so it was a productive stop. We asked the fellow who checked out our purchases whether it was always this busy, and he said, no, that people were redeeming gift cards that they got at Christmas, and he was hoping that it quieted down soon!

From there, we headed to The Florida Mall to visit Lenscrafters and Helzberg Jewelry. The parking lot there was busy too, but we found a space pretty easily. 

I had gotten new glasses when in Virginia in November, and although I had gotten them re-adjusted 3 times, they just were not comfortable. I took my old frames with me and asked if there was any way that they could put the new lenses into the old frames. The guy at Lenscrafters wasn't positive, but said he would try, and, it turned out that he could do it! He put my old lenses back into the "new" frames which I hopefully will never need to use.

At Helzberg, we had our rings inspected -- and they found a loose stone in my engagement ring -- so it is being sent in for repair, hopefully to be completed before we leave Orlando. Carl asked the lady there whether the mall is always this busy -- she said that she thought it was because there are a lot of folks who visit Orlando from overseas during the holidays, and that they are doing their last shopping before heading back home.

Other stores in the mall...

A Tesla store, selling cars and their "powerwall" for storing solar energy for home use (link to information), and maybe other things too -- we didn't go inside.

Across the mall from the Tesla store was an Apple store - you may not be able to tell, but it was packed -- there were a number of simple tables in the store (like maybe 4-6 rows of 4 tables) and there were items displayed on each table, and people around them playing on them or learning about them or comparing the items.

This is a picture I found on the web of the store... and here's the website link. We didn't go into that store either...

After a stop at Costco to get fuel for the Jeep and to pick up a couple of items, we were heading back to the campground... but got into a lot of traffic (we may have been in normal rush hour type traffic or maybe exit traffic from one or more of the Disney properties).

As we were stuck in traffic, we noticed that we were right by the new Portillo's (which we had read was going to open on January 10). It appeared that there were quite a number of cars there, so we turned in to see if it was open, and it was! So, we decided to stop to eat (two meals eaten out in one day, I can't remember the last time we've done that!) and hope that traffic got better...

Inside the restaurant while waiting for our meal to be prepared -- the monitor screen in the upper left is showing the order numbers being prepared...

and then they move to the right and turn red when your order is ready to be picked up.

As is the custom in all of Portillo's restaurants, they have a picture of the original restaurant which was in Villa Park, Illinois, near where Carl grew up -- though he does not remember that his family ever got food from there when he was growing up.

A view of the rest of the restaurant. There were quite a few people enjoying their Italian beef sandwiches or hot dogs.

We thought this person had a pretty good parking spot (suspended from the roof of the building).

Once we finished eating, we continued on our way back to Gracie, stopping for groceries at Walmart on the way, arriving home well after dark (to a very needy Miss Kitty who couldn't understand how we could have left her alone for the most of the day!). A busy day, but a number of to-do's off our list.