Heading South to Miami

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Geo: 25.78, -80.2185

Hired a Hertz Rental for the trip to Miami. 7 seater Dodge SUV. Picked it up from the Marriott Courtyard Hotel (25 minute taxi ride) and had to get used to driving on the wrong side of road quickly & surprisingly I found my way back to Art of Animation Without a hitch.

After having a quick breakie & packing the car (it all squeezed in, but only just-we now have 3 large , 2 x medium! Sports bag, 4 x back- packs & of course the handbag) left Art of Animation around 09:00am and headed for Kennedy Space Centre! aided by the navigator on the phone. Almost there and you guessed it the fuel alarm went off, fancy renting out a car with less than quarter a tank? Luckily we found a BP And filled up.

Arrived Cape Canaveral- Kennedy Space Centre Visitors Centre and started with a bus tour of the NASA facility. Crossing the Banana River we spotted a mother alligator and a dozen baby alligators resting in the sun

Crawler transporter is used to transport the space ship and booster rockets from assembly to launch, takes 8 hours and uses 32 gallons of fuel per metre and weighs 23,000,000 lbs fully laden. Viewed the Launch pad 39 A which is where the current program will launch from and the
VAB - vehicle assembly building

Shuttle landing facility is 3 miles long and is a concrete runway 16 inches thick(4 x the thickness of a normal runway)

Apollo / Saturn V centre which features a 365 ft moon rocket, the Firing room theatre which recreates an Apollo launch and the Lunar they're depicting the first moon landing. also got up close and personal with Apollo 14 Command module, the "kitty hawk"

Space shuttle Atlantis & shuttle launch experience (launch simulation). This allowed us to explore NASA's space shuttle program in an interactive experience centred around the Atlantis Orbiter. We then strapped in for the sights, sounds and excitement of a space launch. Sensational!

Hubble telescope 3D IMAX movie which demonstrated the profound impacts on the way we view the universe and ourselves. Excellent story!

Left about 16:30pm, much later than planned and headed south on FL 95 which took about 3.5 hours. Never seen so much traffic going north and south on an eight lane highway. Arrived Downtown Hilton courtesy of Celina's expert navigation. Going to our room, which was upgraded to Bay views, we were told by the porter that we should have taken the Turnpike which would have shaved 60 minutes off the trip. Never mind, we can do that next time.

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Photos

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The hire car we drove to Miami

The rental car

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