Garden Grill at Epcot

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Garden Grill is a character dining family style restaurant located inside Walt Disney World’s (WDW) Land Pavilion inside the Epcot Theme Park. Once you enter The Land Pavilion simply walk to the back of the top level and you will see the restaurant. There are also benches and bathrooms just outside in case you need them.

Garden Grill serves American food in a family style, meaning food is served in large plates with small plates for each person. You’ll be greeted upon arrival by a cute Mickey Mouse table setting!

Once seated you will notice the restaurant is actually moving! The tables slowly rotate in a circle and allow you to see scenes from The Land ride including homesteads, rain forests and prairies. Don’t worry it goes very slow. In fact, we did not make a complete circle before we were done eating. The food is great!!! They also serve mac and cheese for the kids (even though I particularly love WDW mac and cheese) and finish the meal off with a fruit cobbler.

While eating you will be visited by Mickey, Chip, Dale and Pluto so have your autograph books and cameras ready and on the table. Our family loves character dining because it saves us from standing in character lines in the park. Garden Grill also serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. Also all the veggies served during meals at Garden Grill are grown inside The Land Pavilion!

We love Garden Grill! The food is delicious, the characters are fun and the restaurant rotates! Definitely one to add to your trip. Prices range from $35 for children to $60 for adults. This restaurant also has the option of Candlelight Processional tickets during the Holiday season.

Want to add this dining to your WDW vacation? Ask me how! You can message me at Callie@wanderkeep.com or you can find me on Facebook at Callie at Wanderkeep Travel. As always my services are complimentary!

Lulu’s Bakery and Café-San Antonio

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San Antonio,TX

The first thing I do when we travel anywhere is find some super cool/super cute places to eat. I like to have options! I jot down a couple of places to go in each city and then I’m never left hanging. I’m always able to find a new and different place and we don’t just have to settle for some McDonald’s.

Lulu’s Bakery and Cafe is an adorable little diner on your way into San Antonio. Lulu’s is famous for its 3 pound cinnamon roll-you read that right. Remember I do all the things! It’s important to realize when parking at Lulu’s that parking is very limited and a little shady so definitely drive or wait in the parking lot until you get a good spot.

 

You seat yourselves and Row and I decided to go straight for the counter, complete with swivel chairs.

 

I recommend ordering the cinnamon roll first! It’s actually amazing. Like really amazing. We only ate a tiny bit so we could have a good old Texas lunch but it was so good.

Lulu’s chicken fried steak is the thing to get and if you’re there with someone else I would split the small one so you don’t overeat. Now listen I am a Texan and we take pride in our chicken fried and I can honestly say this was awesome!

 

You can stop on your way out of town and snag a cinnamon roll to take home-which I wanted to do but….one is enough. Don’t forget to take a cute picture on your way out. I definitely recommend this adorable diner as a stop on your visit to San Antonio. Lulu’s is kid friendly, has great food but don’t go there if you’re on a diet-and who in their right mind is one a diet on vacay!

Tennessee Family Travel

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Fifty Nifty Unites States from 13 original colonies….we are at it again and racking in some states on our most recent family trip. We jumped in the old family truckster and battled pouring rain and early hours to make it to the airport late for this one. So late that we missed the next two flights since they were full so we decided to camp it out in the airport for awhile and enjoy ourselves.

I have been making family travel a priority and we are working on all fifty states before our girl leaves our nest. I have been using Southwest deals to get us to some fun places so if you’d love to make this happen for you family then sign up for the emails. They run deals I would say every three months and for this one Nashville came up and I snagged it.

Tennessee has a ton to offer families traveling so come along with us and see a snapshot of our trip. I will be doing follow up posts with more details on each attraction. How do I plan these trips? Honestly it takes time…and I heavily rely on fellow bloggers who have gone places. Bloggers are such a great resource. They give honest opinions and find things trip advisor just can’t.

Our trip lasted 4 nights and 5 days and we started off in Nashville!

Nashville-Day 1-well we missed our flight so yay-I had to scrap our plans pretty much for the whole day but….I was able to make our planned dinner at The Oprayland Gaylord.

This hotel is amazing!!! It’s basically a complex. You have to pay a hefty price to park and basically get lost doing it but once you’re in the parking lot head on over through the conservatory doors. You will enter right into the hotels amazing conservatory with plants and waterfalls, streaming lights and several restaurants. We chose American Cafe because it was right by the jumping water and it also had the most kid friendly menu. You can also order sushi if you like. The meals are amazing and a complete splurge-so bring the money. Or you can pay to park and walk through several areas,the lobby-not to be missed and ride the glass elevator up and down-oh yes we did. Don’t drive by this one-go in.

 

Chattanooga Day 2-We made the trek from Nashville to Chattanooga. Our destination was the Historic Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel but we had plans to stop at Ruby Falls, The Incline Railway, and Rock City which technically is in Georgia so number 8 check!. We stopped at the Falls first since it was actually on the way to the hotel. After walking our feet off we headed to our hotel.

Oh MY Word-you must stay here! It’s amazing. We opted for the train car room-you can also get a regular room and it was worth it!

Tons of posh eating all around the area-seems to becoming hipsterish. It was quite nice to have a variety of dining in walking distance.

 

Pigeon Forge-Day 3-We started our day with breakfast and a car ride to Pigeon Forge. Our hotel was the Christmas Inn and it did not disappoint. As you can see I like to do all the things. We got out of our car and walked into Christmas music!

Our day was spent at the Titanic Museum-yes it was awesome.

 

And the Old Mill for dinner-so good. I had no idea Pigeon Forge was so awesome and we will be adding this for another trip in the teen years-so much to do!

Great Smoky Mountains-Day 4 We stayed two nights at the Christmas Inn due to the fact that there is no lodging inside the national park. We drove through the entire park-as quick as we could and headed over to the Great Smoky Mountain National Railroad in North Carolina-number 9 if you’re counting. We did a four hour train ride through the Smokys and while it was a bit pricey this was a once in a lifetime thing! We also drove through the Cherokee Nation which was really interesting.

 

Back to Nashville and Home Day 5-I made a late flight ressie since it’s a 3.5 drive back to Nashville but you can do it! I was actually able to squeeze in one more thing that we missed on our initial day. Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage-yes I am a history geek. It was pouring and we were so wet but we went and did it and it was so worth it.

 

 

This was one of our best trips yet and I never realized how much fun was in Nashville!!! More posts in details to come. Come on-fill up your book-make your memories-they’re not too young or too old. All we will have left is love and memories so get out there!