Hampton Inn Titusville/I-95 Kennedy Space Center

The idea was to go camping this weekend in Orlando. My cousin Dougie's two boys are in the cub scouts and had a camping outing scheduled at Fort Wilderness (http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/resor ts/campsites-at-fort-wilderness-resort/ ). Dougie invited me to join them with Rebecca and Christopher, which I decided would be a great idea considering that Rebecca and Christopher had never been camping yet ...

... crowded town Disney was all it had.

Magic Kingdom , Disney World.
The Disney's Magic Kingdom was very close to where we stayed , yet we managed to lose our way and got there only by mid-day.But upon arriving there we learnt that it was open till twelve in the night and we had plenty of time.The park came across as a perfect them park with it being divided into different zones on a particular theam

... stream - see video below. Julie stood next to a huge stuffed alligator in a gift shop on international drive (see picture).

In the afternoon went to wet n wild and had another go on some rides. I carefully stayed out of the sun to give the sunburn chance to heal.

all told a lazy day .... but a nice one. Also had some chocolate covered pretzels... yum yum...

... shuttle launch and thinking of the crazy people inside who had just strapped themselves to several tonnes of combustible fluids. The Shuttle was making its way to the Internatioanl Space station, which we knew nothing about before but are now totally fascinated by it, its pretty cool even if it does use a lot of fossil fuels to get up there.

In honor of the Shuttle launch we spent several days in the area and checked out the Kennedy Space ...

... historic" district (E.g. anything more than 40 years old is "historic in the US), had a look round, then drive to Cocoa Beach. We got a quick ice-cream, as it was already about bloody 90 degrees and us Brits were MELTING!!!!

Following that, we went to Cape Canaveral to do something I have always wanted-look at Manatees! We waited patiently and soon enough, we saw massive ...

... space programs, Mercury, Gemini & Apollo rockets standing up like a bed of asparagus. Outside they have a 9-ton "Constellation Sphere" that floats on a ring of water - so smoothly engineered that a child can rotate it (that's if grown-ups let them). Our tour around the launch pads took us right up to Launch Complex (LC) 39B & to within a mile of LC 39A with Endeavour perched on it. We could see the huge orange External Tank (ET) & the 2 Solid Rocket ...

... lunar landing, the rescue of Apollo 13, the first American female astronaut, and the construction of the International Space Station. Sadly the successes were interspersed amid the tragedies of the Apollo 1 launch pad fire, the lift-off explosion of the shuttle Challenger, and the re-entry loss of the shuttle Columbia. During these forty-seven years, a television screen was the closest I'd ever ...

Left Daytona Beach early yesterday, Monday in order to be tied up in Titusville early afternoon due to impending bad weather. We did not anticipate the severe shoaling that we would run into and ended up plowing through two areas where we saw 3.5 (our draft is 3.7) feet of depth! It was quite nerve wrecking! Nevertheless, we persevered and made it through. Very slow going due to the ...

... the times. We visit a few places and get the " Oh hello English tourists. Isn't your pound doing well against the dollar? This always results in silly prices that are surprisingly reduced from astronomical prices. The last question as we walk away is always " Well, what price did you have in mind?" We have even been offered (very good looking) refurbished laptops as new ones. Talk about the urban jungle!! Temperatures are now back in mid 80's, which they say ...

... the lush foliage of the Polynesian so I didn't mind. Eventually a monorail came and we went all the way to the back and got our own car. I love the whole monorail spiel - "Please stand clear of the doors." I also loved how they had Stitch saying, "Are we there yet?!" in the background. Very cute. We enjoyed the short ride and got off at the Grand Floridian. I had never really liked the Grand Floridian. From the pictures and videos I ...