My favourite things in Florida (not in order):

1) Dolphins. There are so many dolphins, when you are in the sea they can come within a hundred meters of you, you get the chance to feed them and swim with them as well at various locations. At SeaWorld, you can watch an amazing show where the dolphins do amazing tricks through the air and underwater, often alongside their trainers.  This is me and Jack in the water doing a trick with the dolphin.

2)Food service. It may be rare to find a meal below a 1000 calories here, however the service is at least a 1000 times better than back in the UK. If you glass is half empty they will immediately offer you a refill, the servers frequently come up and check on you and always ask if everything is going okay, why you're here, where you've come from. They are interested in you.

3) Our accents. The Americans love the British accent, if they here the slightest trace of your accent, they will ask you where you're from. I love that they love our accent, they always say how, if they've been there, how great London is... Furthermore they think that everyone knows everyone in Britain, it's so amusing!

4) Disney. Disney is magical.  'It all started with a mouse', and now there can be over 100,000 people visiting Disney World every day. Everyone is kind, and I honestly do not think you can work there unless you have a nice smile; their cheek bones must hurt by the end of the day!! There is so much to do, and queues can be tediously long, but the trick is to get there early and do the big rides!   We have been setting our alarms for 7am every morning.

5) Lizards. There are lizards all around, it's surprising when you don't see one. And they are so cute, you can usually as close as a foot to one, then they just scamper off in to the nearest shrub, but they look at you with their beady eyes, defiantly glaring at you until they run. They are so cute and jumpy. I like the lizards! :) 

Emma

x

Hollywood Studios on Sunday

Hollywood Studios has really interesting things to see and do.  Our favourite ride is the Buzz and Woody 3D shooting ride.  I think I was overly competitive - I have really hurt my wrist using the trigger mechanism - it actually woke me up during the night and we have had to buy some tape to strap it.  This is me and Ems before the ride - wrist obviously ok then...

We did the Rock nRoller coaster (good loop inside in the dark) and then took a quiet look behind the scenes on the Back Street Lot tour.  You travel through the costume department - they make 25,000 outfits a year there; and there's a museum with famous costumes from the films, like the Scarlett O'Hara dress which she makes from the green velvet curtains.

This is a funny costume.  

                                                          

There are false perspective streets of New York and San Fransisco which they occasionally use in the movies.  Here's Richard, Jack and Ems in front of the New York backdrop.  The whole set is about 12 feet deep.

Here is Jack wearing 'The Giant Hat of Cleverness':

We also went to the Star Wars ride (good) and the Muppet Show (funny) then as the thunder clouds gathered we headed home for lunch and a splash in the pool.

Dinner was brilliant - we'd booked into a Tappanyaki restaurant - where the chef cooks everything on a hot plate in front of a group of 10.  We shared with two other families - the people on my right came from Arkansas and lived on a 100 acre ranch in the middle of nowhere with cattle and horses.  I saw a picture of Mom on a rodeo horse - yeehah!  She travels 35 miles each way to work or the shops.  Her husband spoke to Jack about the rugby he had played while in the forces and asked if we knew a girl he had met from Rochester.

Richard and Ems spoke to a family from Georgia whose 15 year old son was trying out for a basketball team the next day.  He was one of the shortest in his team at 6ft 2.  And you should have seen his dad!

Top night out

Saturday

Saturday was our day of doing nothing.  We went to Denny's - an all American breakfast chain where people were queuing out the door.
Breakfast is complicated.  There are too many choices.

How do you you want your eggs? - Fried, scrambled, poached,
How well do you want them cooked?
Do you want sausage patties or links?
Do you want it with grits and lump gravy (under no circumstances)?
What sort of bread do you want?  English muffin (?) French toast? Pancakes?
What sort of milk do you want in your coffee?

And it doesn't seem to matter that everyone gets exactly what they want - there is still a huge amount of wasted because because the portions are massive.
We've only eaten out once since we've been here  - I think you could eat breakfast once every four days and that would carry you through.

We went on to a shopping mall which was so busy that the only place we could park was by dropping the car at a valet parking station.  The most exciting shop was the M & M store - a whole store devoted to M&M sweets and products.  Here's our Em in the M&Ms store:

Then we went to Downtown Disney - an area packed with Disney shops, restaurants, cinema complex. Cirque de Soleil, art galleries and other entertainments.  A great place for more silly hats:

And a beer by the water:

Proud to say that we didn't buy a single thing in the mall or at Downtown Disney.  Jack and Ems are more than happy swapping pins - their collections are looking good.

Everglades

We had a good journey down from Naples towards the Florida Keys, stopping off to do an airboat tour of the  Everglades on a small noisy hovercraft.  The mangrove swamps go on for miles and it would be easy to be lost for days in the shallow, brown waterways.  We saw several alligators - they are not bothered by the boats and swim fearlessly up to the side; I was on the side of the boat and quite scared, ending up on Emma's lap in case he decided to climb aboard.  

Then we walked along a boardwalk by the lake where they keep other alligators and were told to look for the 'gator boy' for a 'real educational talk'.  This turned out to be someone who 'wrestles' gators for a living - it's a funny, odd, poor area that scratches a living one way or another introducing tourists to gators.

Gator boy prodded and poked the exhibits, dragging them by the tail until they were exhausted or fed up - it was fascinating and repulsive - he was a fifth generation gator boy and would have been astonished that this was not pc.

Anyone who wanted to could hold the smaller gators - Richard and I declined, but J &E went for it; Ems's one struggled in her arms but she held on to it - we all agreed that we would have dropped and done a runner.

 Here is Ems being an alligator.  Much safer.

Friday at Epcot

I love Epcot.  It stands for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.
Not sure that's true now as it looks a bit 60s but it is a great mix of rides, information and countries of the world viewed through the eyes of America.

We saw our first 'characters'.

Boy, they must be hot in those outfits!

Jack and Ems had a great time pin trading - swapping badges with staff to make sets on their lanyards. As I was a newbie, I was given a 'spare' lanyard with the least desirable pins in order to swap them for better pins.  My lanyard was definitely not cool.

We only did a few countries. Canada, France, Morocco and Japan:

Here I am singing 'O Canada!'

The others are noteworthy for their excellent hats.

Cheeky chapeaux from France.

And funny fezes from Morocco.

Richard went to meet some clients from BlackBerry at a conference in the one of the Disney hotels so this is a selfie of the three of us in Morocco:

Home, pool, dinner, all sitting quietly now reading our books.

Day off tomorrow.

SeaWorld on Thursday

Thursday

If it's Thursday it must be SeaWorld.
Ems is absolutely against animals in captivity but actually it's really moving seeing killer whales leaping about in time to music.
The show is very different to ones we've seen before - security is much tighter since one of the trainers was attacked in the water by a whales.  No more balancing on the whales' noses or even swimming with the animals - this is as close as the trainers get.

SeaWorld has two great roller coasters - Manta and Kraken - the crowds were small enough for us to queue for the front row for both rides.  My brain cells are definitely diminishing from being bashed and spun this holiday.

Wednesday at Magic Kingdom

Wednesday
And we've arrived in Orlando.
Unanimously we voted to go to the Magic Kingdom first (mostly because we love the Buzz Lightyear ride).  We sent our RDP (Rapid deployment person - Jack) to get Fastpasses for Space Mountain so that we could go on the really scary Transit Ride.  Here is Ems being really scared.

Here we are looking the wrong way while driving round the Racetrack:

It was really hot and we were willing to try anything which promised a breeze.  The Carousel looked promising - Richard chose the smallest horse, I think his feet were dragging along the ground!

Space Mountain was better than I remember it - a real bone rattler of a roller coaster in the dark.  And we went to try out the new Ariel ride.  Ems and I sat nicely in a clamshell listening to the story.

Hot and tired, we headed off back to the pool to cool down.

We went for dinner at the Texas Road House which had good reviews.  It was a mostly steak menu but with a bucket of unshelled peanuts on the table which you could eat and throw the shells on the floor., an alternative to sawdust.  Our server, Missy, was very enthusiastic returning every few minutes to shout at us and tell us that she was just checking we were ok; we were close to asking her to pull up a chair.  Every now and again the staff would burst into a line dance just in front of our table and whoop and holler - I'm sure the restaurants in Texas can't really be like this.

Welcome to Dolphin's Cove. One of the many sites and places to swim with Dolphins in the Keys.

After a rather large breakfast at some place called "Piggies" or something, we headed 50 miles as a birthday surprise to go and see dolphins. 

The whole experience was amazing!! It began with a talk on dolphins a little on how they acted, their biology etc, and then we got to swim with them! 

The first session included all the tricks; the dolphins pushed you along as if you were Superman, and the dolphins jumped through hoops and they allowed you to stroke them and just generally play with them. 

The second session was a free swim. The dolphins could choose to come up to you if they wished, and you were given a snorkling mask and flippers. They often travelled in Pods of 3 or 4. 

It was an amazing experience and I loved every second of it, my favourite dolphin was one called Zoe. 

Today is Monday, our last full day on the Keys.  It's warm, humid and gently overcast - a blessing for us newbies.

Richard and I went to the Key West - the most Southerly point of the US of A, mostly because I wanted to drive over the bridges to get there. 

The Keys is an odd place - beautiful low lying islands that end where the mangroves reach the sea; bursting with tropical greenery but no beaches.  The Keys are an area of natural beauty and, so that everyone can enjoy them the Americans have built a massive highway down the middle so you can get to Key West.

Once you arrive, you can queue to have your photo taken next to a concrete painted boulder which says that this is 'The most Southerly point of the USA'.  There are lots of bars, T-Shirt shops and a surprising number of galleries with pieces for $30k and $40k not uncommon.  The town is not what I expected (quaint, monied); it's quite run down with small clapboard bungalows gently rotting in the humidity and chickens and cockerels scratching around.

As soon as we started our journey Jack rang to say that Emma had been sick - either separation anxiety after being in the same room/restaurant/car together for a week or else the astonishing multicoloured breakfast cereal she had chosen the day before.  Ems was able to confirm that her output matched the picture on the box - no more of that healthy start to her day.

Richard and I didn't get back until 3.  Ems looked fighting fit so we went out to the resort's putting green and then on to the pool.