OUR EXPEDITION TO FLORIDA
Having just settled into our home in
London, we headed down to Florida for a week.
This trip was from Saturday 18th May to Saturday 25th
May. Chris was attending the “International
Adult Aural Rehabilitation Conference” – this is a biennial conference that he
has attended for the last 10 years!
There are very few direct flights you can take in North America, as the
routes centre around a few major hubs such as Chicago, LA, Dallas, New York, and
Toronto. So a flight that could have
potentially taken 3 hours, took the whole day!
We flew from London to Chicago, with a four-hour stop-over, then onto
Tampa in Florida. Apparently, O’Hare
Airport (Chicago) is the busiest airport in the world! I would believe that, the place is HUGE!!!
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| Waiting in O'Hare for our flight to Tampa |
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| Riding a train between terminals at O'Hare Airport |
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| Flying to Tampa |
Sirata Beach Resort, St Pete’s Beach, Florida
The view of our resort from our room
The boys on the balcony of our room
Alex pretending to be George of the Jungle!
Fun in the pool and poolside!!
While Chris was attending the
conference, Alex, James and I spent time either at the pool or doing day trips
to Legoland and Busch Gardens. I decided
that Disney World was not a goer on this trip with two-hour line-ups for
rides!! Not feasible with a 3 year-old!
Legoland
On the Tuesday of our week in
Florida, Alex, James and I embarked on a 90 minute drive to Legoland. This was a huge theme park aimed at 2 to 12
year-olds. We went on a number of fun
rides, based around the various themes of Lego (e.g., Kingdoms, Pharaoh Quest
etc). Line-ups were only 5-15 minutes,
which we could all handle! Another
highlight for us was the “miniature” display of famous landmarks, cities, and
tourist attractions as well as a huge display of Star Wars scenes made out of Lego. James and Alex went to driving school and got
their “Legoland” drivers licences. We
saw about half of the park in a day, which was enough for me! Unfortunately, our drive home took three
hours due to massive thunderstorms, floods on the roads and road closures! A tad scary, but, the important thing was we
returned safely, the boys were terrific and I made it home just in time to go
to the conference dinner with Chris!
The entrance to Lego Land
At the entrance to KSC
The Salvador Dali Museum
Riding in the Island in the Sky - a huge platform
that gave us a view over the entire park!
Duplo Land
Riding on Merlin's Challenge at Lego Kingdoms
A huge Pharaoh made out of Lego at Lego Pharaoh Quest
A Lego Merry-go-round
Famous places made out of Lego........
The Kennedy Space Centre
Las Vegas
Home Alone - Lost in New York!!!!!!
Alex and R2D2
The boys with Darth Maul
Learning to drive at Lego Land
Busch Gardens
On the Wednesday of our Florida trip we
drove 40 minutes to the north of Tampa to visit a theme park called the Busch
Gardens. This was probably one of the
most fascinating theme parks I have EVER encountered!! The park had an African theme with different
areas depicting different regions of Africa.
Each region had theme-based rides and dotted throughout the park were
animal enclosures. So it was a zoo/theme
park combination. There were four main
highlights for us. I loved the
train-ride through a “Serengeti Plain” filled with rhinos, giraffes, zebras
etc. Alex enjoyed a theatre show called
“Operation Vacation” featuring the characters from the animated film,
“Madagascar”. James adored the Egypt
section, particularly an exact replica of King Tutankhamen’s tomb while it was
being excavated by Howard Carter in the 1920s!!!!
And we all loved the sky-ride (that gave you a birds’-eye view across
the park) so much that we went on it twice.
Thankfully no dramas were encountered on the drive home!
The Sky Ride
A view from the Sky Ride
The Egypt section of Busch Gardens
James pretending to be Howard Carter and Alex ........climbing!
Inside King Tut's tomb.
The crew from "Madagascar" in "Operation Vacation"
Having fun on the rides at Busch Gardens!
Riding the train through the Serengeti Plain
- we saw rhinos, giraffes and zebras
James and Alex on safari in the wild
There was NO WAY I was gonna touch that snake,
I left it to James and Alex!
Kennedy Space Centre (KSC)
Thursday was the first day Chris had
free to spend with us. We spent the day
driving across the entire width of the Florida peninsula (3 hours!!!) to visit
the Kennedy Space Centre – just to keep me happy!!!!!!! This was an interesting experience, but tinged
with a little bit of disappointment, mostly because it was not a suitable place
for 3 year-olds!!! The centre contained
two interesting museums: the history of space exploration and the future of
space exploration. James and Alex loved
the “Angry Bird Experience”, I loved the IMAX presentation about the story of
the International Space Station. Poor
Chris spent most of his time managing Alex’s expression of his boredom and
madness. We did not get a chance to do
the tour of the NASA command centre/vehicle assembly building/launch pad. We will save that for next time as that is
the thing I wanted to do the most!
The robot from "Lost in Space"
A 1960s command centre
The suit Neil Armstrong wore
when he first walked on the moon!
The Rocket Garden
The Angry Bird Experience
One of my favourite artists in the
WHOLE world is a Spanish guy by the name of Salvador Dali. His work ranges from the 1920s to the late
1980s, when he died. Of ALL places in
the world, there is a Salvador Dali Museum in Florida, featuring 96 of his
works. Lucky me, it was only 20 minutes
drive from where we were staying!
On Friday we spent a relaxing day by
the pool with Chris and I snuck out in the afternoon to commune with
Salvador! What a treat! The museum itself is a stunning work of art
– see the photos of the huge window structure and the staircase. Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos to
show you of the artwork as photography in the galleries was forbidden.
The works ranged through the full
span of his career. When Salvador first
started painting, he was influenced by the Realists and Post
Impressionists. So there were a lot of
beautiful landscapes and still-life that looked very Monet-ish or
Cezanne-ish. He was, of course very soon
influenced by the Surrealists and these were my favourite paintings – dreams,
nightmares and the subconscious – influenced by the writings of Sigmund Freud
(Freud was gaining recognition and respect at the time). The museum also had some works from the third
phase – can’t remember what it was called, but Dali was focussed on
spirituality and the merging of science and religion. They had several of his “masterworks” from
this period (canvasses that were about 4m x 7m.......stunning!!!!!). This period was influenced by the atomic age
of the 50s and 60s.
The front of the Dali Museum
Inside the Museum
Back to London
Not surprisingly, our flight back to
London on Saturday was a day-long journey.
We flew from Tampa to Chicago and then onto London. There were a number of delays at various
points that resulted in a 12-hour journey – somewhat tedious!!!!
Anyway, our week in Florida was fun
and relaxing! I would go back to the
Sirata Beach Resort any day (and KSC of course)!!! After
over a month of travelling and setting up our house, we were finally looking
forward to a more settled life in London.
More about everyday London life in my next posting!
