Ugh, I had this post almost complete then hit some mystery button by mistake and it all disappeared. When will I ever learn to save these things every few minutes?
Want to catch up on what happened on day one of my trip? You can read all about it here.
Okay, here we go again! Yesterday I left off at the end of our marathon shopping trip. That night we slept like the dead and woke up ready to get going!
We started the day with an exciting trip to Publix to get groceries for the next few days. We had a fridge in our room and I had brought a soft sided cooler so we could make and bring our lunch and snacks each day instead of depending on whatever food was available on site. We each spent $60 and had enough food for breakfast, lunch and snacks for 4 days plus a few extras (I bought some minnie mouse ears for my niece).
After getting our groceries taken care of we headed up towards the convention centre to see if we could get into the zumba wear shop. After yesterday’s scene we expected to have to wait in line but lo and behold – no line! We walked on in with no wait at all giggling like little school girls! Truly it was a crazy clothes wonderland!
And if there’s anything us Zumba instructors love – it’s crazy clothes! We were in there for well over an hour, we lost each other countless times, had exciting experiences in the “community” change room and during one of those trips to the community change room I heard that the zumbawear outlet shop was open – with a 2 hour wait to get in. While we didn’t want to wait around in a line-up for hours, we did want to make a trip to the outlet so we thought we’d at least check out how long the line was and figure out what to do from there.
Happy girls with their purchases!
We get to the area the outlet was being held and there was nobody around. We knew that the outlet was going to have weird hours so I automatically assumed it was closed. And then we saw someone just walk right in. Could it be? All the stories we heard from last year was nothing but waiting in lines to get in – was it possible we were just going to stroll on in like we owned the place? Yes, yes it was. We were beyond giddy! While there were still quite a few people in there it wasn’t too hard to get around and see what was what.
Sadly, while there was lots there when we went in (we must have got there within a few hours of it opening) a lot of it was instructor branded stuff, or things that were too small for most normal size people (there was lots of x small stuff though!). It took me probably an hour to find 8 tank tops to bring home to sell to my participants, I had hoped to get way more but it just wasn’t to be I guess. We really took our sweet time in there making sure we saw everything and got everything we wanted. The line up to check out was pretty long but moved quickly and after checking out we walked out of the store – and nearly died. In the amount of time we were in there a few hundred people had gathered in a line waiting to get in the store – the same store we just strolled right on in. We really couldn’t believe it.
I can’t even begin to tell you how pleased we were with ourselves at this point. We were literally skipping out the doors saying, “Jesus really loves us! We didn’t have to wait in any lines or anything!” We got outside still thinking we were really something else, and headed towards the trolly stop to wait for the trolly to take us back to our hotel.
note the umbrella…
But before we even made it to the trolly stop this happened
And in case you’re wondering, the trolly stop wasn’t enclosed. It had a metal umbrella thing over it that had holes in it and it was raining so hard it was truly raining sideways. We were drenched in 2 minutes flat. And then had to wait another 10 for the trolly to come.
I can only assume that is a piece of my hair plastered across my forehead.
We were freezing cold but luckily we had new zumba hoodies we could put on. 
The sad part is we had planned to go to Seaworld after dropping our stuff off at the hotel. Clearly, this was our penance for not having to wait in any lines…
Once we got dry and warm at the hotel and checked out all our purchases….
This is our combined haul – NOT just mine!
…we decided to go check out the other outlet mall. We were, after all, in Florida, just because it’s raining we aren’t going to sit in our hotel room! But first, we stopped at the gift shop and made two important purchases – umbrellas. Which we never left the room without for the rest of our trip.
The real truth of the matter is I wanted to go to the outlet mall because I found out there was a lululemon outlet there (Thanks for the tip Ally!!), and really I hadn’t already spent enough on Zumbawear so I surely I should go to lululemon right? Exactly. I think Jen would be disappointed in me if I hadn’t gone!
I was good and only bought a bra and skirt but I sure wanted to buy another bag, but I didn’t. Sigh….
Sidenote: I realize that in Canada we pronounce “Z” as zed and not zee like the Americans but my goodness, I couldn’t believe how many people didn’t know what I was saying when I said “zed”. There were at least three instances where people asked for my name to put my name on the change room (at lululemon), or get my email address or something and when I spelled my name saying “zed” they would ask me to repeat myself, and I’d say it again, and they’d ask again, and after the second time I caught on and would say “zee” instead of “zed” and honest to God, one person said to me, “I didn’t realize you had different letters in Canada!” Oh my goodness. I’ll leave it at that.
Second Sidenote: I went to A&W at this mall for my supper. I was going to get a Mama Burger Combo. Apparently they don’t have the burger family in the states. Everything was named like, “double cheeseburger” and stuff. I couldn’t even determine what to order from the photos of the burgers. Whatever I ended up with sure didn’t taste like a Canada A&W burger. There was a serious lack of the sauce that makes an A&W burger and A&W burger – plus their fountain pop sucks. Likely because it’s made using their icky water.
After this shopping extravaganza (seems that’s all we really did the first two days!) we hoped on our beloved trolly (we didn’t want another aimlessly walking in the wrong direction event) and ended the day with a lovely soak in the hotel hot tub.
Coming tomorrow:
Friday was pretty slow day. We saw Pitbull and Wyclef in the Zumba Fitness Concert (and I ended up being in two youtube videos released by Zumba Head Office from the fitness concert!), met Gina Grant and Lindsay Taylor, were only a few feet away from Beto, took an awesome Columbian workshop – and oh yeah, went to an exclusive Pitbull concert. I’m not sure what I’ll even find to write about! 
Question for my American pals: If someone who you knew was named Suzi spelled their name and pronounced the Z as “zed” would you know what they were talking about? Please tell me you would…