Advertisement
Published: October 15th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Blog 6 October 2007
Still in Buenos Aires and no Iguazu Falls for us unfortunately. We arrived at the domestic airport, having stored most of our luggage at the hostel and were issued boarding passes. This is always a good thing when ‘staff’travelling. We were very excited. I had booked a hostel at Iguazu, it was going to be a quick trip but we would have had enough time to see the Devils Throat, the main big one. Our flight was delayed but we were not too worried at that stage. Then the flight status changed to ‘see agent’ and we found out the Lan staff had gone on strike. We waited for another 3 hours or so and gave up. Bugger. What a waste of a day.
Having no accommodation for that night, we phoned the hostel but they were fully booked. I managed to get another hostel eventually. This new hostel was in San Telmo, another city suburb. This hostel too was just lovely. Just as charming as the last one. Maybe all Argentinean décor is this lovely. We had a really lovely dinner at the restaurant next door, where the waiter was so proud of his
English.
We spend the next morning doing a little shopping and collecting all our luggage from the various hostels before heading out to the international airport to get on a flight to Miami. All flights with Lan and American Airlines were overbooked. American put us on standby and we waited near gate 20, as instructed. Unfortunately, we were not waiting at gate 20 close enough and when they looked for us there couldn’t find us and thus we missed out on the flight. This was a major disaster for us. Lan couldn’t take us as they were overbooked. We slept at the airport in our sleeping bags on the floor for about 3 hours before getting a flight to Santiago, Chile then transiting there for 12 hours and going to Miami. Airport taxes at Santiago cost us $156US for just landing and departing. We got a room at an airport hotel and had a lovely 4 hour sleep there. I am now typing this on the airplane enroute to Miami. We hope to be rested up enough to start Disney on Tuesday. That’s all for now. Chow chow.
Things are looking up. We arrived at Miami at approx
5.00am, hired a car, and we were off. Heading north towards Kennedy Space Centre. We organised a hotel room for that night and had breakfast at Lincoln Road Mall at Miami Beach. It was really lovely with lots of lovely shops. The weather is hot here and we saw lots of people walking their dogs, rollerblading, biking and even a guy on a bike with his pet rooster. The things you see! We arrived at out hotel and did some washing, swimming and an early night.
Kennedy Space Centre and NASA were unreal. We arrived and there was almost nobody there - car park empty. We did a couple of IMAX movies about the space station and the moon. We also did a realistic space shuttle launch simulations which was pretty cool. We then went to see inside a space shuttle and look at the rockets including the Gemini and the Apollo Saturn 5. We had ‘lunch with an astronaut. Our astronaut was Jon McBride. He gave a general talk about flying in space but he was also keen to motivate children in the audience to study hard if you want to be an astronaut. After lunch we went
on a bus tour “Up Close Tour” which took us past the vehicle assembly building and the launch pad 39B and pad 39A which is where most of the Apollo flights took off from and happened to have a space shuttle on the pad being prepared to launch in two weeks. While we were on the bus tour we happened to see an 11 foot (3.5m) alligator in one of the drainage canals next to the road. We also saw the 5000m runway which the space shuttle uses to land on. We then went to the space station component assembly building where we could look through glass doors into the clean room. We saw the Japanese team assembling their module as well as the Europeans working on their module. Overall it was a fantastic day, tickets are valid for a week so we may get back there for another day to see the things we missed due to time constraints.
We stayed in a cheap little motel; we have discovered vouchers which save you a heap. Disney first thing in the morning.
We arrived at Disney 7.30am after dropping hire car off. Got up at 5.00. It is
going to be a long day. Our hotel, on Disney property, New Orleans - French Quarter is beautiful. We were able to check in straight away and caught a bus straight to Epcot Park. It is really fantastic. The golf ball is huge. The park is landscaped really lovely and we were straight into it. Our first ride was Mission Space which simulated a launch to Mars, we only did that for real yesterday at Kennedy Space Centre, but in true Disney style, this launch was a little more exciting. It was really cool and the thing spun around super fast to simulate the 3G feeling. We also did Soaring (unreal), Test track (2x), Nemo and a Norwegian boat ride. We did not get to do everything as Epcot is huge but hope to go back.
Wednesday, we did Magic Kingdom. It was great to see the beautiful castle and Main Street. Thursday, MGM and Animal Kingdom and finally Friday we revisited our favourites. The girls enjoyed getting photographed with all the Disney characters. The rides were all pretty good. The parades and firework/lighting shows were great. The girls were asked up on stage for a bit of the
High School Musical 2 Show. The Halloween party at Magical Kingdom was unreal. The girls trick a treated, and heaps of people dressed up. It was a great night. It was pretty busy at Disney and the weather was quite hot, which was a nice change from South America. Our hotel was lovely. We could take a launch to Downtown Disney (shops) and buses to all the parks. The pool was great with a slide and the room was lovely. We finished on Friday night at 11 PM and then had to find a motel and pick up our bags and get a taxi there. It was a fantastic time but we were all shattered.
We decided to rent a car and drive to Denver as we had a few spare days up our sleeves. In hindsight this may not have been the best idea as we could have done with a couple of rest days. But we are on our way now and enjoying the scenery. The farmhouses and countryside are lovely. America really is just like in the movies. Everywhere we go, we seem to be a bit of a novelty to the locals who love to
hear us speak. Today a lady asked if the kids spoke just like us and they had to say a few words. I guess they don’t see too many tourists out this way. We visited Helen Keller’s birthday place in Alabama and visited Graceland in Memphis but we arrived just after closing time. We are not big Elvis fans but it was good to see the house from the front, signed the brick wall and check out the shops and museums. Tomorrow we drive through Oklahoma and up to Kansas and a bit of the old Route 66. We hope to be at Russell and Joyce’s by Tuesday night. Till then. Love Suzanne, Tim, Sarah and Rachel
Advertisement
Tot: 0.061s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 11; qc: 30; dbt: 0.0233s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
rosie & co.
non-member comment
Enough already.
Oh my god, I'm exhausted just reading it! Only one word to describe how i feel........jealous. Enjoy!