Florida Is Awesome!
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Monday
Disney, here we come! We spent the whole day in the Magice Kingdom Park and Epcot, from early in the morning until late in the evening!
In the evening around closing time, it started pouring. We were soaked when we reached the car. We had brought our bathing suits and towels with us so we changed right there! When we arrived at the resort, we acted as normal as possible but the security guy couldn’t resist a grin seeing four people with wet hair in their bathing suits covered with towels at 11pm!
Tuesday
Today we went to the Florida’s Everglades. A long three hour drive to join the Billie Swamp Safari in the Big Cypress Seminole Reservation.
The Seminole Tribe of Florida opened the Billie Swamp Safari for visitors from around the world. It is a way for the Seminoles to maintain the Seminole culture while operating in a “normal” economy.
We enjoyed the safari experience learning about the Indian culture and native village chickees. The swamp buggy tour, the snake show, and the airboat ride gave a good impression of how the natives lives surrounded by all kinds of exotic animals like alligators, pigs, ostriches and snakes.
Wednesday
Because of the launching of space shuttle Endeavour, we wanted to spend the day at Kennedy Space Center. But a lot of other people apparently had the same idea! We were stuck in traffic just 6 miles before the Space Center! We turned around, and instead we went to the Disney Typhoon Lagoon Water Park and stayed there the whole afternoon.
To endure the heat and stay hydrated, we drank and swam a lot. We bought a refill mug, to be able to drink as much as we wanted for ten dollar. Hans and Frank took several dips in the large wave pool every time a wave was heading for shore. They tried to catch the three to four meter high waves to body surf on. Every time a wave was created you could hear screams of excitement.
In hindsight, we were glad we changed our plans. We had had a great time in the water park AND were unexpectedly treated with still seeing the launch of the Endeavor. At about half past six, we looked in the sky and saw the Endeavour climbing higher and higher into space.
Thursday
Again to Disney World, to Disney’s Animal Kingdom and Disney-MGM Studios. In the Animal Kingdom park was also an African safari similar to “Beekse Bergen”. The combination of wildlife next to rollercoaster thrills in the same park still seems strange to us.
We used our fast-passes and for some attractions with a waiting time of more than a hour it was a relief to have them. Hans and Frank could ride the popular Expedition Everest in 10 minutes! Also we did a quick visit to Disney-MGM studios late in the afternoon. We saw “Beauty and the Beast”, the men visited two roller coasters again.
Afterwards we went to Ruby Tuesday for a nice dinner. We were back in the apartment around 10.30 pm.
Friday
On our last day, we visited Kennedy Space Center. We had the special guided bus tour to see the whole complex and saw the massive Vehicle Assembly Building (where they put the different parts of the space shuttle together), saw the enormous Crawler Transporter (used for bringing the assembled shuttle to the launching platform), got up-close look at the two launching platforms of the space shuttles and the Shuttle landing facility. We learned that sound waves produced during liftoff of the shuttle are reduced by spraying water on the platform otherwise the whole complex would be destroyed. At lift-off emergency people are a few miles away staying in a bunker to protect themselves against those sound waves. Driving around you see beautiful nature around you, animals like alligators, turtles and snakes are protected and doing well in this area. Because of them, we were strongly advised not to walk near the water or in the grass!
After the bus tour we went to see the Apollo/Saturn V Center with the enormous Saturn V rocket that brought the first man to the moon. It still is amazing how they got this enormous rocket into space and the astronauts back safely!