After lunch, we went over to the Living Seas. Once you get inside, you have the option of seeing the film in the "Briefing Room" or going directly to the Hydrolators that take you to the seabase. We decided to skip the film, since we had seen it several times, and went straight for the Hydrolators; it appeared that over half the crowd did the same thing, although some did go see the film. We spent a great deal of time looking around at the various exhibits and such, probably more time that I've spent in the Living Seas in quite a while. Laura is always fascinated by all sorts of animal things, so she wanted to make sure she saw everything. After we had seen it all, we caught the Hydrolator back to the surface.

We had planned on going back to the hotel to swim, but it was starting to get cloudy, and Laura said she didn't want to get there right when it started raining, so we decided to stay in the park instead. We went in the Land to see about the Living with the Land boat ride, but the standby wait and Fastpass return time were both quite long, so we decided to skip it. We went over to Journey Into Your Imagination. I still like the original version much better, but as I've said before, I'm a sucker for a ride with no wait, and that's what this one usually is. Once we had finished having our imaginations recharged, we decided to go to Spaceship Earth, which had been quite crowded when we first arrived. We had a very brief wait before getting on the ride. To me, this ride is the closest Future World attraction to how EPCOT Center originally was (again, see the ending).

The hotel and a totem pole in Canada

After Spaceship Earth, we decided to walk around World Showcase. This time, we did something we had never done before - we started at Canada and went counter clockwise. Just call us rebels. I guess because Mexico is my favorite of the World Showcase countries, I usually wanted to start there. But we decided we might see more on the west side of World Showcase if we started there instead of ending there. Just as we got to Canada and were taking some pictures of the gardens, the rain started. We dashed into the shops just before the hard rain hit. Once we had looked around there all we wanted to, we waited for a while, hoping the rain would end, but when it didn't, we decided to move on in during the lighter rain. At the United Kingdom, we spent some time looking in the shops, and I was slightly disappointed that the toy shop now has mostly Pooh items. I had wanted to look around at the gardens there, but the rain prevented us from doing that. During another break in the heavy rain, we went on to France, stopping briefly in the shops there, looking in vain for some Disneyland Paris merchandise like they used to carry. We also watched one of the Living Statues for a bit. Morocco offered more shops, but we also went in the small museum. Either most people don't know about this one, or they just don't care, because we were the only ones in there. We enjoyed seeing the artistry of the tile and carving in the walls almost as much as seeing the artifacts they had inside there.

France during the rain

At Japan, we walked through the Mitsokushi department store, watching to see a few people pick oysters for the pearls inside. One person got an extremely large pearl, and the Cast Members there seemed quite impressed by its size. As with France, there was no Tokyo Disneyland merchandise to be found in the shops of Japan. Japan also had an interesting exhibit about the history of baseball in Japan. At the American Adventure, Blast was playing in the American Gardens theater as we went by. They sounded good, but we really didn't have that much interest in seeing the whole show, especially with the rain. We looked through the shop at the side of the American Adventure, but we decided not to take the time to see the show. Italy was quite interesting. They are apparently refurbishing the main building. But instead of putting a large green construction wall around the whole building, the outside of the scaffold around the building is covered with a scrim with an image of the building. So at first glance, or as seen from across World Showcase Lagoon, you can't tell that anything is different. Quite clever. We mainly looked around the Christmas shop in Germany, stopping to see the large clock chime outside. We briefly looked around the gallery in China. Norway had quite a long line for the Maelstrom, and we didn't really feel like getting a Fastpass for that one.

Italy, also during the rain. Note the large scrim hiding the construction on the left

So we headed on to Mexico to ride El Rio del Tiempo, the boat ride. Sure, it's not all that exciting, and there aren't any sudden drops or anything like that, but it is one of my favorite rides in all of Epcot. After we had sailed the River of Time through Mexico, we looked around at the shops in the village. We then wandered around outside for a bit, making our way back over to Norway to look at the viking ship playground they have there. We looked for a while in the shops at the entrance to World Showcase, and then made our way back to Mexico, since it was almost time for our preferred seating at the San Angel Inn for our anniversary meal. Our time was 6:15, but we got there about 6:05. We sat at a table that was back away from the river since they could go ahead and seat us there; we wanted to be finished in time to see the second performance of Tapestry of Nations at 7:45. Our server was Jorge, and he was quite good, even knowing the recipe for the salsa, which was the best we ever had, much better than what we make at home; we'll have to try their recipe now. Our food was quite good, and we enjoyed the atmosphere almost as much as the food. As we were finishing with desert, Huitzilin started their performance, and they were quite loud. While we enjoyed hearing them, the noise got to us after a while, so we went outside to get our spot for Tapestry of Nations.

Germany. Just as I took this picture, the large Hummel-like figures came out to strike the clock bell on the hour.

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