Orlando baby yeah!
Trip Start
May 27, 2007
1
13
27
Trip End
Dec 23, 2007
Orlando and a brief trip to Tampa!,
Florida,
United States
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
I discovered on my first night in my hostel that there were a lot of dorks staying in the hostel that seemed to follow me around solely because I had spoken to them on the first night! I spent a lot of my time in the hostle trying to avoid them... luckily I had some really nice girls staying in my room so was happy to spend my time there with them.
I left Orlando and went to Tampa. My first experience of Amtrak was not a good one. The train arrived over an hour late and then was delayed further because a truck broke down on the track and needed to be towed! I eventually arrived in Tampa and took a taxi to my new hostel. The taxi driver got lost on the way there and ended up taking a age to get to there! When I finally reached my hostel it was nothing more than a glorified tree house (and not in a good way!). I arrived in my room and found I was staying in a room that was sleeping 4 with room for 3 a bed that was only about 3' wide! Nightmare.
2 other Brits (Sam and Ryan) arrived at the same time as me and we all went to the local town, Y'bor City, to check it out. It was like a ghost town. There was nobody in the streets and when we went into a pizza place for dinner we were the only customers! Our hostel housed 3 resident weirdos. One of them decided randomly in the middle of a conversation to get up and go and put on a full gas mask and suit!!!
The following day I went to Busch Gardens with Sam and Ryan and rode all the rides and visited the animals on a mini safari type thing. This was the only attraction in Tampa as far as I could tell!
I decided that I did not want to stay in Tampa and would return to Orlando and do Disney as Sam and Ryan were going there anyway. We decided we would rent a car and go to Clearwater Beach on the way (well not really on the way, in fact in the completely wrong direction) to Orlando. Even if I say so myself I think I did an excellent job of the driving (only one over 25 so had to do all the driving) on the wrong side of the road for the first time in my life! My only problem is that I tended to drift to the righthand side (yes I did just look at my hands to figure that out!) of my lane as was naturally lining myself up with that line as if I was driving in England.
I visited 3 of the 4 Disney parks (Magic Kingdom, Epcot and MGM Studios) in my second trip to Orlando. I met so many of the Disney characters but had to spend a good amount of time looking for Stitch! I was so very happy when I found him. I tried to persuade him to leave the park and come home with me but he said he had a good job and all his friends were in Florida so he wanted to stay :( & ; ; ;nbs p; I settled for a toy version of him instead!
I also decided that I would do another skydive as they went up to 18000' and you got views of Kennedy Space Centre on the way up in the plane and, if you remembered to look, on the way back down again! I managed to get talking to the staff at the skydive place and got partnered with the best skydiver they had. So very happy! I was wearing a trampolining polo shirt and the guy noticed so decided that I would be able to cope with extreme turns... we exited the plane backwards and did so many back somersaults before opening out into normal freefall!!!!
Off to Miami now... another update in about a week!
Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=49891&l=b1196& id=562300227
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=47707&l=d30a6&id=562300227
