Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Universal Studios

It all began with a 6am wakeup call. My aunty's house is about an hour away from Universal so we wanted to get up and get ready and be there by 9am when it opened so there wasn't long lines. I was unfourtanately getting over a really bad flu and was still coughing and sneezy. Basically feeling like total shit.

But it was Universal... for fucks sakes. So I dragged myself out of bed and prepared myself. We stopped off at a drug store so I could get something for my nose to stop the sniffling. I ended up getting this Zrytec D (on reccomendation) I had to show my ID. This proved more hassle then it was worth because there was no options for other countries and the cashier couldnt fill in my details properly. But he was a nice guy and we got around it with half using my Auntys Address and half using my Darwin address.

We went to Islands of Adventure first since it had some of the best rides and since we were heading in early there wouldn't be as long to wait. So first thing I got to do when I entered the gates just feeling a little better with the medicine was "The Hulk" only one of the scariest roller coasters ever. Way to jumpstart my universal adventure right... Wait times were only 5 minutes which was even better. The problem I have with rollercoasters is...well I hate them to death. I also love them to death. I love to be terrified... but as I was wrenched upwards towards my hulk doom my stomach fell. God it was an awesome ride but god I was terrified.

Then onto "The Amazing Adventures of Spiderman" only my favourite super hero of ALL time. It was 3D and you were in this little roller coaster cart and it just sort of moved around like a mini much safer ride but because of the 3D made it seem like you were going on a much faster more exciting ride. There was this one part where our cart is vertical and the ground rushes towards you I actually closed my eyes briefly at that part I freaked out! And believe it or not that was the only ride I closed my eyes on..

Because the wait times were still low we headed off to another of the popular rides "Duelling Dragons" another rollercoaster ride but with two seperate tracks fire and ice. We took the ice track and because my uncle insisted I actually sat in the very front of the coaster. The two coasters fire and ice rush around at the same time sometimes looking like they are about to directly hit, you can understand me being in the very front of the coaster how scared I was...At one point I swear I was literally rushing 200km/h straight at this wall and then straight up I felt like my feet were going to be wrenched from my body.

So on the way back from the duelling dragons we decided to hit the Jurassic park ride. A much gentler ride but still with a bit of drop and scare attempt. This ride got me wet. It was close to lunchtime now and heating up so we figured now was a good a time as any to take on the water rides. My aunty (smartly) sat them out so just the four of us went on "Dudley Do-Rights Ripsaw falls"which was an excuse to get me (the lucky sap who got stuck in the front) soaking wet. Since we were already soaked from that ride we decided to do the "Popeye & Bluto's Bilge-Rat Barges" and everyone got soaked right down to our socks. Except of course my aunty who once again must have got the brains in the family

They even have these buttons on the walkways above and people can actually spray water at us. These bloody kids did it to us and I didnt even realise it was them till I got off the raft and saw the buttons.

About 1pm now and we decided to head over to the other park Universal Studios. On the way out though we were nearly run over by SPIDERMAN!!! and some others... Storm, Cyclops and someone else. BUT SPIDERMAN!!! So I let them go on thier little all terrain vehicles before racing to find spiderman. I saw the rest of them running around the streets getting photos but I couldn't find spiderman... until I ran into this guy with a sign. Spiderman was in this little dingy room and I had to line up with all these little kids just to see him. But like I was going to come to Universal and not get a picture with spiderman HAH. Even funnier I was still soaking wet from the rides...

Then onto universal we went! The first ride we went on was "Revenge of the Mummy" yep... another scary rollercoaster ride all in the dark. I actually screamed in this one. I think the hulk was scarier but I just felt like screaming. Waiting on line one of the attendents came up behind me and was just staring at me. I turned around and saw him and he had these freaky contacts in.. I was like "what the fuck" We then decided to go on "Disastor" which was meh. Long wait for such an anticlimatic ride. The funniest part was when we were sitting in the fake subway train and they are throwing all these disastors at us and all this water came gushing out of the subways stairs right on my side!! I was still drying up from the last water rides so I practically climbed over Aunty Em to get away from the water. Not because I was scared because I didn't want to get wet again!

We decided to go to Men In Black even though my uncle was against it. On the way I saw beatlejeuce so another guy I had to get my photo with!! Which are all up on my face book by the way http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=585873948 add me! My uncle decided to sit out of MIB because it was a "stupid kiddy ride" The line was about 25 minutes long but after about 2 minutes we were like "stuff this lets go in the singles line" which basically means you all get seperated to fill up spare seats. We figured who cares its not like you talk to each other on these rides anyway. We were in and on the ride in less then 5 minutes. Brendan and I were on the same cart anyway but he was in front of me. You got these little laser guns and had to shoot at all the aliens. One guy on my cart got 240,000 points. I got 43,000 and I think Brendan got around 70,000.

Next ride was ET. The wait for ET was so beautiful it was all dark with huge fir trees everywhere you felt like you were in the middle of a forest. The ride itself was pretty calm but nice. You were on bikes with ET on the front taking him home to save his planet! I dont know why my uncle went on that one instead of MIB...

Since time was coming to an end and I was exhausted. All that walking and my sickness I was like the walking dead. So we decided to head back and just do the last few rides. Twister which was talking about how they made the movie and then you stand in this section and they re-create a small twister. Jimmy Neutron. One of those rides you sit in the seats and the screen makes it look like your moving and the seats shake around and stuff. And Shrek 3D a bit like jimmy neutron but 3D and you dont move as much. Although there is this one scene with spiders... I can see Carmen and Heather freaking out.

I know I rushed through Universal and didn't really see any of the shows or anything but I had an awesome day and im more of a ride person anyway. I fell asleep in the back of the car on the way home :D

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Chillaxe

The Florida vacation has taken a slide into a real beach holiday. I've been spending my days just chilling, shopping and chilling. We went up to St Augustine to check out the outlets, Brendan and I had a great time getting big name brands for small small prices. My Canadian wardrobe is coming together! I came to Florida completely prepared for beach weather and completely unprepared for anything lower then 20C I guess that comes from living in Darwin my whole life.

We spent about six hours shopping I even got some new sneakers (which I needed) and in that six hours probably spent about $300.00. Which compared to the amount of clothes we got NOTHING!! I am so loving the shopping. My favourite item of the day was this awesome Tommy Hillfiger long sleeve shirt usually $49.00 down to $6.00!! Anyway enough about the shopping!

We also went to a surfing competition down on Daytona Beach which was wrapping up the spring break month. Daytona has big spring break. The waves and weather were kind of crappy so we didn't stay long. Your warm for five minutes then it starts raining and its windy for the next five. Then warm again... by the third rainstorm I was like stuff this. The waves couldn't have been more then a metre high anyway the surfers were getting minimal up time.

I am just loving the chilling out. The buying a car thing is probably not going to happen here so it looks like we might fly to Canada instead and buy a car there. It depends. My uncle is looking at buying a car we might be able to hitch with him to New York. Its just to difficult with registration and importing into Canada. We are better off buying a Canadian approved car and doing the road trip into America on the way back. I'm a little bit sad because I was interested in seeing a bit of the east coast. Maybe I'll check some websites see if any hippies are making the journey and hitch a ride! does anyone know any good websites that I might be able to find like-minded backpackers?

Oh I also went to my little cousins softball game which was so cool. Bunch of under 13s but the parents just went crazy! You would think you were at a serious game. They are screaming and yelling at the kids and every parent knew every kids name. Only problem was it was fucking freezing. Overcast and windy and I only had a tiny jacket. Then it started raining but not heavy enough to call off the game!! It went from 7pm - 9:30pm (late for little kids on a school night in my opinion!!) My cousins team won woohoo.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Jetlag

I was hoping to beat the dreaded curse of Jetlag but I think I just paused it and made it worse! Every single morning I am waking up at 6:30am. Doesn't matter what time I go to bed I am up in the AM! One good thing about it is I am walking along the beach every morning which is good for my legs especially when I push through the water. I do about 5 miles (according to my aunty) in the morning and 4 miles in the evening.

Wednesday 2nd of April My Aunty took us to Deleon Springs State Park which is the stomping grounds of the guy who discovered the 'fountain of youth' The park has a bunch of beautiful old trees and a natural spring. The main reason we went was for the pancakes! They had this cute little gimmicky resturant where you get all you can eat pancakes for 4.50 a person and there is a hotplate in the middle you cook your own! You pay extra for sides I got chocolate chips and strawberries. Then you just throw them in. That was filling I think I managed about 2 pancakes and I was done. Some convicts were fixing a sign so I tried to sneak a picture of them without being noticed. They must have been good convicts since we walked within two metres of them and they only had these really old guards. There were kids running all over the place!!

Thursday 3rd April we went to the Ponce De Leon Inlet lighthouse. Named after the famous spanish explorer who discovered Florida. It was a hard walk up 203 really steep stairs. Thanks to my beach walking though I was a little more prepared to deal with it. Up the top was an amazing view of Daytona Beach and the surroundings. It just reminds me how beautiful Florida really is! We went and had a drink/snack at a little resturant by the beach. I couldn't get a good drink because I'd forgotten my ID...

Friday 4th April. I stayed up to 2am Thursday to try and beat my jetlag only to still wake up at 6am and be fucking tired ALL DAY. Emily took us out to Bells Outlet store which is a good store that sells lots of brand name clothes at discount prices. Brendan and I got heaps of stuff for about 40 bucks. Yea crazy Brendan actually got a few things! He was trying on some shorts and I was just throwing all these shirts over the change room. Its the only way I can make him try stuff on! I wanted him to get this shirt 'ride the mustang Ford' but we could only find it in small :( Then for dinner we went to this little place called Hooligans which serves awesome hotwings. If you have a movie ticket its buy 10 get 10 free. And the beer (coronas) were $3.50 each I was drinking vodka sunrise for $4.00. For three of us Dinner & Drinks inc tax and tip it came to $53.00. I found out waitresses earn around $3.00 an hour. WHAT THE FUCK! so as a patron not only are you paying for the meal you are tipping to pay for the wage of the waitress. Man to be in the resturant business!

We went to a liquor store after dinner and I got a 2 litre bottle of smirnoff vodka for 20 bucks. Brendan got a litre+ bottle of jim beam for the same! I could seriously never leave with these crazy prices. I also got carded which was exciting for me!! I havent been asked for my ID in years..

Then we went to my Aunty's friends place and somewhere I got drunk. Outside we were talking to these people about the difference in Australians and Americans. Then I met some younger people and we talked to them for ages. The guy said he would teach us how to surf but I was pretty drunk and so was he so I dont know if that is going to Happen...They lived next door so they took us over to play 'darts' but the chick passed out and I got lost. I ended up out the front of the first house just feeling so drunk and sick. I forced myself to throw up then went inside to sleep on the couch. Emily saw me though and dragged me outside to go home. When she went to retrieve Brendan I lay down on a mini trampoline on the lawn and tried to sleep.

I think we got home about 1.30am. I threw up again when I got home and then crashed out. Only to wake up once again at 6am..

Saturday 5th April. Feeling like crap all day because I was so tired I forced myself into bed about 12 to sleep. All I really did was toss and turn. Emily got Brendan to wake me up so she could come get me to fix some computer problem. Her friends place is so nice. They live right near the river which is a rich million dollar neighbourhood. Her house has about 7 bathrooms!! She is a mediator so makes a lot of money. Anyway they had brought this tv convertor so they could watch some softball games which is televised online through thier laptop to the tv and couldnt get it working. They had it plugged in alright they just didn't press FN - F8 on the laptop to output. Lucky I worked with Dells for the last two years hey!

When emily dropped me home I just went to bed. And now I am awake at 5am.lol... Jet lag I will conquer you tonight!!!

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Shopping in florida

My jet lag is getting better. I was up around 6:30am this morning. Its funny watching Brendan with jet lag because he is the ultimate snoozer if I don't drag him out of bed he can sleep all day! This morning though he was up the same time as me!

Em took us shopping in the afternoon to a cool little factory outlet where I brought a few things at seriously cheap prices savings of about 30 dollars an item!! Some good brands. Brendan was useless once again shopping with him is annoying. I would prefer to just shop by myself and buy him stuff he always wears what I buy!. We also went to walmart and I checked out the games section. DS games are cheap as here! Problem is I will probably buy more sort of defeating the purpose!

After the shopping we went to Krispy Kremes and Dunkin Donuts where we got a frozen coffee. Like a slushy. It was suprisingly good!. Way better then the coffee with icecubes in it.

Also we went to walmart and coming out there was SELF-SERVICE!! My aunty scanned all the items herself and even paid her money to a machine!! She took us for a drive along the main strip of Daytona.

When we finally got home we all went for a walk along the beach about four miles all up.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Florida!

I've updated so everyone can post on here now without needing to register

I'm here.

The flight was horrible. We had a direct flight originally with QANTAS from Melbourne to LA which wasn't so bad. QANTAS have great service. The only issue was the plane was chockers full and we had a pretty large lady in our aisle seat who had to get up every time we wanted to pee. I spent the whole flight just watching movies. Because we went at 10am I just wasn't ready for sleeping until we got off the plane! The movies were good to there was a little TV in the back of the seat and it was on demand so I could watch whatever I wanted and fast forward/pause as desired. I watched Beowulf, Atonement, Heartbreak Kid(or guy??) Some show on a pageant for transvestites. The Bee Movie, Alvin & The chipmunks and I can't remember what else. The food was decant we got a hot lunch I had chicken in oyster sauce. Yummy but not enough Brendan had beef in red wine I think which was better then mine cause it came with potatoes!!

So we got to LA airport about 730 and spent an hour going through customs/immigration. It was a lot easier then everyone made it out to be just the fact there was so many people made it so slow. The guy who checked my forms was like "I'm so lucky I get all the pretty girls in my line" seeing as I had been on a plane for the last 14 hours it was a nice thing to hear!!.

Finding the checkin for our connecting flight was the hard thing. LA airport is really disorganized. We found it then had no idea what queue one of the guys sent us to the self-service check in and when we got to the front of the line I had no idea how to use the machines and it turns out it only works with the yankee tickets so we had to go to another queue who pointed us to these phones. We called and checked in only to be told our connecting flight had been changed to 9:30am instead of the original 10:30am. I checked my watch and you guessed it... it was 9:31am. So for an extra 100$ US we had to get new flights which would get us in at 11pm instead of the original 6pm. Which also meant we had been awake for 20 hours straight and we no longer had a direct flight we had to go through Atlanta.

We had to sit at LA airport for 3 hours so Brendan and I got some iced coffees from this shop which was just cold coffee with Ice cubes in them... We threw them out and went to macdonalds where I got two chocolate thickshakes and a large "fries" I accidently said chips first and the guy thought I said juice lol.

We both got some sleep on the flight to Atlanta despite how noisy it was since it was the middle of the day and only crazy aussies are probably sleeping. WE were just that tired. Then on the 1 hour flight from Atlanta to Orlando I watched Adult Swim. Brendan found it fascinating that we had to catch a train to get from the departure gate to the luggage pickup. Where emily was waiting!!

So after an hour and a half drive we made it to Emilys where she prepared us toasted 'everything' bagels. With 'cold cuts' I'm pitting all the new yankee words I have to learn in inverted commas!! I think it must have been 2am we finally got to bed which would have been at least 35 hours since we left melbourne and had had any real sleep!!

I got up at 9:30am and I woke Brendan up at midday. Hopefully the 35 straight hours has void any jetlag I might get. Emilys house is great its about 5 minutes from the ocean which I can swim and surf in! (if I could surf) Her tv is massive and there is 400 channels. So I am in heaven :D Oh yea and I have the internet access now reguarly!!

Anyway I do have a big writeup of Melbourne but its on my laptop and I havent got around to unpacking yet. Its really just THANK GOD I AM FINALLY HERE!!