Day 10 - on the road again, Panhandle, Florida

Today has been a mix of relaxing on the beach near Panama City and driving leisurely west. We're now in Pensacola in an inn that's a bit rough around the edges for the price we paid, but hey, it's like with the petrol - everything's still about half price compared to Sweden.

We have no pictures from the lovely, lovely St. Andrews beach we went to this afternoon, because we had to make another quick escape from a thunderstorm, but here's some roadtripping goodness instead. No captions needed, the pictures can speak for themselves.






Tomorrow we head off to New Orleans to taste the gumbo, hear the jazz and feel the voodoo of the deep south!

Be seein ya mon!

Day 9 - Disney World, Florida

Today we went to Disney World at Orlando. It consists of four different theme parks and lots of other small things around it. It'd take at least a week to see it all, so we went for the classic Disney experience of Magic Kingdom. You can tell that the place is designed for kids and families, but we enjoyed our trip there. It was expensive to get in, but every ride and experience is extremely well made and breathtaking. In short, it was worth it. The whole of Magic Kingdom is built like a miniature world with different areas, like Adventureland which is a jungle/pirate/caribbean experience, Tomorrowland, a sci-fi/space/technology area, or Frontierland, a gold rush/western town. Below is a shot of a street in Frontierland, showing that so-fake-it-looks-authentic look that's visible throughout Disney World.



The park was filled to the brim with families, fat Americans and fat American families. We'd seen some 'wide load bottoms' around before, but Disney seemed like an XXL-magnet. A lot of people actually went around on those electrical permobiles (you know, originally designed for old people who just can't give up driving) and in wheelchairs because they were too heavy to walk around the place. So far, everyone (regardless of size) we've talked to have been lovely and friendly and you can't help loving this country, but it sure is crazy in some ways.

The queues to most rides were very long, between 30 and 60 minutes. At first, we just walked around to find something with a short queue and ended up on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Apparently the films were based on this ride, but when the films were so successful, they changed the ride to fit the film better :)

We saw some great interactive shows: The enchanted Tiki something with and Aladdin theme, Stitch's Great Escape (from Lilo and Stitch) and a Monster's INC standup comedy show. A lot of the rides were clearly for the kiddies, and we didn't exactly feel like hanging around for 30 minutes to ride some tea cups! Unfortunately, the biggest ride of the park was closed - Space Mountain. Disheartened by this, we went for something to eat, and while we enjoyed (hmm..) some fast food, the now familiar Floridian afternoon downpour began. This was actually good because people fled the queues in the rain, and we managed to get into both the Haunted Mansion and Splash Mountain rides with virtually no queues. The latter was an awesome log flume ride with plenty of splashing and thrashing and a great way to end our day at Disney World. Below is a shot of a non-authentic Louisian steamer boat, in case we don't see any down in New Orleans. In the background you can just make out Splash Mountain!


Of course we also saw the trademark Disney castle, but we didn't stay for the late night fireworks. Here's the castle anyway; proof that we were actually there!

We're now relaxing in another cheap roadside motel outside Gainesville before heading to the Panhandle coast tomorrow. We're going to have a lazy day tomorrow, looking to see some more beaches (and hopefully sun - I know it's out of season, but this has really not been the Sunshine State so far!). The plan is to delay our trip by one day, so that we're in Las Vegas between a Sunday and a Tuesday (originally Sat-Mon) because the hotels are ridiculously cheap there on Sundays and weekdays, and about twice as expensive on the weekends. We're looking at a luxury hotel on the Strip for about $70 a night - that's 500 SEK (or 50 euros for our international readers). Crazy!

Day 8 - Kennedy Space Center, Florida

*Yaaaawn*

After a long and exciting day, I'm pretty tired, but I promised pics last night so here we go!

Mattias in a full scale space shuttle from the early days. Pretty tight!


The actual command centre where they oversaw the takeoff of Apollo 8, the first manned spacecraft to travel around the moon (probably the same command centre as for Apollo 11 as well, when the first steps on the moon were taken):


A full scale model of the Saturn 5 launch rocket. I couldn't fit the space shuttle in the picture - all of these parts were destroyed at lift off :D

Our local beach at Ormond Beach, just north of Daytona Beach. We took a little swim in the ocean - it was warm but the currents were strong so we mostly walked along the beach.

The hotel pool, where we went for a late night swim before returning to the room.

And here we are now, ready to crash into bed and sleep. Up bright and early tomorrow for a trip to Disney World!

PS. They said on the news today that there's no risk of a hurricane until after July 17th! By then we are out of the coastal area around the Mexican Gulf, so we don't need to worry about a Katrina-like scenario in New Orleans. There are still local thunder storms and heavy rain in the afternoons nearly every day, but they pass within an hour or so.

Until next time!

Day 7 - On the road, Daytona, Florida

Not much to say today - we spent the day making very good progress along the interstate 95 road and completely catching up with our schedule. We drove into and through South Carolina. Our route took us through Myrtle Beach, an absolutely crazy town which seemed to consist of one long street which went on for about an hour. Along this street we saw about 20 mini golf (or fun golf) courses in the shapes of volcanoes, treasure coves (including pirate ships), dinosaur landscapes and Hawaiian islands. There were strip clubs, hotels, restaurants and most of all, lots and lots of neon signs and billboards. I imagine it was a bit like a run-down miniature version of Las Vegas :)

Next state along was Georgia, the coastline of which is fairly short and on the I-95 it only took us a couple of hours to whizz through. One thing I could mention is the cobwebs in the trees. I'm terrified of spiders, you know. Well, of most bugs of any size bigger than your pinky finger nail really. In SC and Georgia, there are trees along the roads that some kind of spider likes. Every now and again, you will pass a tree with the branches and leaves full of cobwebs in huge clumps. Inside the web clumps, the leaves are dying and rotting. The clumps are so big, bigger than footballs. I just don't even want to think about whether they're made by lots of little spiders or ONE big spider. I don't know what'd be worse!

So, making good time over the border into Florida we decided to go on south for a bit. We ended up in Daytona Beach (yes, the famous racing city) where we found a nice, cheap hotel/inn place where we now have a room for two days. Tomorrow, we're off to Kennedy Space centre, about a hour's drive south. Then, on Wednesday we'll head to Disney World in Orlando, about an hour away as well.

This hotel is lovely - a big, comfy bed, pool, breakfast included (saving us about 10 bucks!) and best of all... A laundry room! Just when we started to feel we needed to do some washing.

No pictures today (though I should have taken some of the cobwebs!), but probably tomorrow from Cape Canaveral. Sayonara!