Wed. 12/21
Today I decide to visit “City Walk,” the giant shopping/eating venue at Universal Studios. The City Walk is “free,” but you still must pay the $15 for parking, but I feel it’s worth it because I want to see what they’ve done with the place since I was last there in 2004 with Gwen (and the highlight was our meal at Emeril’s Restaurant).
I get there, and park in what must surely be the mother of all multi-level parking garages, at least those that are privately owned. I am parked in the “Cat in Hat,” area, row 431, which puts me in the fourth level. I start with a walk from end to end, with Universal Studios on one end, and “Islands of Adventure” on the other. Sure enough, they have added a whole new “side” to the City Walk, which contains a Blue Man Group theater, a concert venue sponsored by Hard Rock Café, and two more restaurants, one of which is a Hard Rock, and the other an NBA Basketball themed restaurant.
I walk past the places where Gwen and I ate, including Emerils, and Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville, and Jimmy has added a drinks-and-snacks addition onto his place, which is called “The Porch of Indecision,” which I find amusing. You can relax with friends, have drinks, all the while listening to JB tunes.
I want to have a nice lunch, but am undecided where to go. I don’t wish to further subsidize Emeril, especially since he turned so unbelievably corporate. (He lost me when he came out the canned soups with his puss on the label). Jimmy Buffet’s is OK, but I’ve eaten there a couple of times already. Some of the venues, like Pat O’Brien’s and Bob Marley’s, are only open for supper. And I sure as hell don’t want to eat at the NASCAR Café or the basketball place. One of these times, I’m going to try a Hard Rock, but not today. So that leaves Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. I’ve eaten there before, at the one at Navy Pier, and it’s not bad, so it’s there or the food court. (As an aside, there’s a place in the food court called the “Burger Kind Whopper Bar.” This kind of scares me, but I do have to check it out. It’s basically a Burger King that serves only Whoppers, fries, shakes, and soft drinks. But once you order your Whopper, you can have stuff added to it. There’s a long list of fixins’ beyond the usual cheese, lettuce, tomato, onions, etc. These include mushrooms, bleu cheese crumbles, crumbled bacon, pepper jack cheese, etc. Each item costs you 50 cents. So conceivably you could order a “base model” Whopper for three bucks, and spend another $5 on toppings, and end up with an $8 Whopper).
Anyway, I order a fish sandwich and Yeungling tap at Bubba Gump. The fish appears to be catfish, or some other “eco-friendly” variety (cod is harder to come by these days), and it ends up costing me $20 with tip. That’s seems to be the “benchmark” for what tourists will tolerate for the cost of lunch around here, as probably determined by some marketing group. My waitress’s name is “Rachel” and she is fun. It’s kind of a slow lunch here today, so I talk with her for a while and ask if she wonders whether the movie Forrest Gump will soon fade from the public conscience and they’ll have find a new name for the restaurant? I get the “look,” and she replies that Bubba Gump has opened two new locations and is more popular than ever. And she decides to test my knowledge of the movie with some trivia, and I pass with flying colors. I win nothing (no free dessert or anything), just the pleasure of Rachel’s company. I find out that the Landry’s Corporation has just bought Bubba Gump, so I’m sure they will find a new name for the place when nobody can remember who Forrest Gump is anymore!
After Bubba Gump, I hang out at a Starbucks for a while, and they have brownies there, so I enjoy a brownie and coffee and read a little more Stephen King. After that, I head over the gym for a workout and a swim, then back to the condo where I prepare some beef noodle soup with some leftover pot roast. It turns out quite good, and I have that with some steamed broccoli. I head of to bed at about 10 p.m. Tomorrow will be a long day with working at the shelter and picking up Dawn at the airport.
Expenses: Parking: $15;, lunch, $20; Starbucks, $4; total: $39
Bruce
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