Homeward Bound

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Our final week on vacation (as the American’s say it) found us back in Florida. We spent the night after the cruise in Miami Beach. As we had already had the chance to look around there a little earlier in the week, we knew what we wanted to see. We picked up our rental car; a 2012 Mustang and drove to the zoo. It was extremely hot – they even have ‘cool down’ stations around the zoo for visitors to stand under and have a cold mist of water sprayed on them. We spent the evening back at Lincoln Road Mall, having our first taste of Japanese for the trip.. Note to self, do not order an appetizer in the US – meals are HUGE!
The following day, we drove to Orlando via Gator Park. Gator Park is a nature park in the Everglades about 30 minutes out of Miami. The Park set amongst hundreds of acres of wetlands, full of alligators! We had the chance to go on an airboat ride along the river and through the grasses. We saw three full sized alligators, one swam right up next to or boat - we could have reached out and touched it! We also saw three baby alligators and a turtle. After the boat ride, they put on a show where you get to hold a medium sized gator. They are surprisingly smooth and soft.

Orlando is an easy 3.5 hour drive on large highways from Miami with multiple tolls along the way.
Orlando was not as I had expected it would be. We had stayed in Anaheim in LA in 2007 and having the same sort of theme parks, I had imagined Orlando would look similar - hotels, restaurants and stores all clustered in one area.
The tourist area in Orlando (International Drive) is really spread out. If you didn’t have a car you would spend a lot of time and money seeing everything. Our resort was near-ish to Sea World. After several battles with getting the free wireless internet to work, we changed rooms (in a different building.. there are 30 buildings within the resort). We had a one bedroom apartment, so we headed out to the grocery store to get some supplies for breakfast and dinner. We spent over an hour in the grocery store, just checking out all the different items. I think it’s fascinating that we look the same and Americans’, speak the same language, but really, we are so very different. – Would you believe you can buy scrambled eggs in a carton?! (See the photo).
We spent our first full day in Orlando shopping. They appear to be the home of the discounted ‘label’ stores. There are two large malls (similar to NZ’s Dressmart), one with 150 stores, the other with 180. We managed to pick up some great bargains.
Because we had limited time in Orlando, we decided to visit just two of the theme parks; Sea World and Disney’s’ Animal Kingdom. Unfortunately on the day we had put aside to visit Sea World, the sky decided to fall… with torrential rain – the first rain we have encountered on our trip (and the last) We decided to head along to the park anyway, as there were multiple indoor shows and aquariums and our ticket gave us entry for a second day if we wanted to go back again. The Killer Whale show was amazing and the Dolphin and Whale show was a close second on the ‘amazing scale’. There was so much to look at and do; aquariums, touch tanks with stingrays, feeding tanks, a dolphin nursery and two rollercoasters – which Jahan went on multiple times (I took the pictures). We did end up going back for the second day and had a great time in the sunshine.
On our third evening, we went to a dinner show; Medieval Times with a friend of mine who drove two hours to visit us. The food was great – finally some good vegetarian food! During your meal they have a battle of knights (with horses). Each section of the room is allocated a knight, unfortunately ours didn’t win, but we had a lot of fun.

Jahan has managed to spend quite a lot of time in golf shops during our holiday. Orlando was no different. There are multiple clearance and outlet golf stores here too, I know he can’t wait to get back to try out all his new gear. (To be fair, I have managed to spend a lot of time in Macy’s, so it al evened out)
Our final day was spent at Animal Kingdom. The park is a cross between Disney characters and a zoo. The best part of the park is the African Safari. We ride in a safari 4WD vehicle through and area that looks just like Africa and pass by Elephants, Giraffes, Zebra, Cheetahs, Lions and more. It was really nice to see the animals so close up and without a fence in between them and us. There was another roller coaster at Animal Kingdom – Jahan managed to ride it three or four times… once again, I took the pictures.
We topped off our 3 ½ weeks away with Cirque du Soleil. WOW. We can see why they are the best in the world. The show went for almost two hours and was non-stop action. With incredible trampolining, high wire, trapeze, extreme jump rope, BMX bike tricks, acrobatics, live music and so much more. It really was a fantastic way to finish our trip.

I want to add something a little different to this blog, so, here are some things we have noticed or found interesting about our trip.

Some themes of our holiday:
• Fish and animals.. We have seen a LOT of fish and animals. So many in fact that we went to an aquarium in every city we visited!
• We have seen a ton of shows while we have been away. In Houston, on the cruise and in Orlando.
• We have done a lot of swimming. There was a pool at our hotel in Houston, on the cruise, beaches in the Bahamas and in Miami and multiple pools at the resort in Orlando.

Some things we have noticed:
• America doesn’t really cater for vegetarians. I have pretty much lived on salad, fries and cheese for 3.5 weeks. It’s almost impossible to find a vegetable on a restaurant menu.
• Burgers come with a side of chips. I don’t mean chips as in fries… I mean a bag of potato chips!!
• Jahan’s favourite drink is iced tea and mine is lemonade (old fashioned lemonade in Kiwi terms) both are more available than Coke!
• People in Florida seem to be perpetually happy, people in Texas… not so much.
• There are multiple restaurants that only serve chicken. I didn’t realize you can get chicken in so many different forms!
• We already knew this, but a New Zealand large sized drink is the same as a USA small.. how do they drink so much soda?
• American’s knowledge of geography is not great. One lady asked us if New Zealand is in the Middle East! A man asked us how far ot was to drive to Australia. – we asked him how far it was to drive to Hawaii.. couldn’t resist!

That’s all for this trip. We hope y’all enjoyed reading about our travels. Until next time…. See-ya!

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Comments

[raelene]

Homeward Bound Blog
Thanks Liz for your very interesting blogs and great photos. Awesome!! Cool!!