Day Six - Pizza and Golf

This little chap has been joining me for breakfast every morning:

He looks quite long in the photo but in reality he's only a few centimetres.

It was quite overcast this morning which meant that the pool didn't warm up as fast as usual. I was very brave though and managed to walk into the 3ft end and sit on the second step for about an hour.

We also caught some of the first rounds at Wimbledon, including Andy Murray's match. 

Once we were all ready, we headed out to Cici's for a pizza and pasta buffet. It's a bit like Pizza Hut with salad included but the best bit for me was that desserts were also included :-) We tried some new  flavoured pizzas including spinach and vanilla (two separate pizzas). There was also a macaroni pizza which must have been very tasty because whenever we got to the counter, the plate was empty! 

The plan for this afternoon was to play the adventure golf that literally surrounded the restaurant on all sides and above. When we saw the prices we thought it was too expensive so we headed to the Premium Outlets instead to spend even more money! After a little shopping spree(!) we decided to drive into central Orlando just to see what was there. We passed three water parks, Sea World, Universal Studios and another adventure golf. 

This one looked much better so we went in. It was described on the sign as 'rated best in Orlando ...' It was even more expensive but we decided to play anyway.

 It was good; in addition to playing, there were 'treasures' to find and if you paid extra, you could feed and / or hold an alligator. We decided that we could live without getting up close with an alligator!

Today was not a healthy food day! It was Wendy's for dinner. Good job we had fresh fruit salad for breakfast and salad with the lunch ;-) 

Day Five - Chill Out Day

After a busy two days at Kennedy we decided to spend the day at home today. I read (and finished!) my 450 page book that I've been wanting to read for over a year. Bernard and I had planned to try out the pool but as we were about to go in a storm came out of nowhere which forced us inside for a good couple of hours.

About 16:30 we decided to go out for a drive in the opposite direction to our usual route.  Around here, most of the trees are palm but just down the road we saw this view and felt as though we were back home:

We also saw this fun electricity pylon next to the I4:

Our little outing was quite exciting because we found a couple of large shopping complexes. One about five minutes from our home and the other about twenty minutes a way. We were particularly impressed with the latter - it reminded us of the Lakeside complex but the units all looked much smarter and offered a huge range of products. If only we'd come across this place earlier in the day...... Maybe we'll just have to venture back one day if we're at a loose end, especially as there's a restaurant called 'Macaroni's'. We have no idea what their menu is like but Harrison is keen to see if macaroni cheese is on it!

This is a typical view along the US192:

There are so many boards - some marking the location of a restaurant or store and others advertising special offers, buffet restaurants etc a few miles down the road. The boards are so close together that it's quite tricky to work out how to get into some of the places.

On returning home I decided to go for that belated dip in the pool. We seem to be sandwiched between two loud American families. The ones to our right were all in their pool playing ball games. Not sure exactly how many of them there were but the neighbourhood would have been well aware of their presence! The couple on the other side make their noise first thing in the morning when most people are still in bed. To be fair, I can only hear them clearly because I sit outside as soon as I'm up. Goodness knows what time they get up because the man is usually mid Skype, giving his employees a hard time, when I get outside around 7am. 

I half got in the pool but then decided that it had cooled down too much to go in any further. It temporarily soothed my mosquito bites which have been really itchy today, so was worth doing :-) Compared to last year's pool in France, this water is tropical but not as warm as earlier so I'll have another go tomorrow. We've decided to have another relatively easy day tomorrow albeit with a bit more structure so that we don't end up running out of days. 

This evening we watched a baseball match on television. We're still trying to work out the rules....

Day Four - Kennedy Space Center 2

It was a long journey home last night. Partly due to the sheer number of people leaving the complex simultaneously  but also due to a very nasty car accident on the road back to the mainland. The staff at the Space Center had done an excellent job though, of getting everybody back to the Visitor Center on a convoy of buses.

Oh dear! I think Harrison's comment about the Space Center being the best day of his life ever may have upset Lewis for tomorrow's race ;-) We woke up to hear that he's 9th on the grid for tomorrow's race.  Harrison was up bright and early again because today is a return trip to the Space Center. I wonder whether he'll be up so early when we go to the factory outlets.....?!

Fortunately we bought multi-day tickets to the Space Center which gives us unlimited entry for a year. The launch has been rescheduled for 17:45 and there's still a lot of the park that we haven't seen so fingers crossed for this evening.

It's about one and half hours drive to Kennedy from our home. It's only about 60 miles but there are so many sets of traffic lights and toll booths that make the journey so slow.  We had to refuel the car this morning because a full tank only holds around 300 miles. Bernard and I couldn't believe it when the cashier asked for $35! Think she was more surprised than we'd been when Bernard told her that we pay approximately $120 for a tank of fuel in the UK!

Good news and bad news when we got into the park this morning. Good because we got 3 complimentary car park passes with our tickets yesterday (parking is usually $10 per car) and we don't need to pay another $60 to view the launch from the Saturn V building later. Bad news because the tours to the VAB and mission control are both fully booked for today. Apparently only 45 seats for each were released.

The park had been invaded by 200 individuals wearing lime green t-shirts! I have to say that they really stood out amongst everybody else. 22q at the Zoo should have chosen a bright colour like this  (instead of red) - it would certainly have got them noticed. The other thing that this group did which added to the impact (and caused congestion at times!) was to all stay together. I don't think that they were trying to raise awareness for a cause (they were from a French speaking church) but had they wanted to, they certainly attracted attention.

Our first mission for today was the Atlantis building. We watched two short films about it in two different rooms. As the final part of the second film faded, the screen lifted up to reveal Atlantis right in front of us! For me that was an even more amazing sight than seeing Saturn V yesterday. One thing that struck me was how visible each individual heat resistant tile was on the vehicle. I knew it had them but had never given a thought to the 'finished look' before. I had just assumed that it had a nice smooth paint job for aesthetic purposes!

The weather had started off much better than yesterday's and everything was looking good for the rocket launch. However, as we boarded our bus to take us over to the viewing area, we noticed that the weather over there was extremely dark. With two hours to go until the scheduled take off, things were starting to look doubtful again. Knowing how quickly the bad weather passed yesterday, we weren't too concerned at this stage. As we made our way towards the Saturn V building, we noticed that the videos being shown on the bus differed to the one's we'd already seen and the driver was taking a different route. He'd already mentioned that it would take us 40 minutes to get there which seemed rather slow considering that the journey only took about 15 minutes yesterday. We were taken on a tour past the VAB, one of the crawler trucks, a launch pad and the viewing gallery used when the shuttle was waiting on its pad. An added bonus was seeing two fire trucks with flashing lights hurrying to the viewing tower!  We wondered whether there had been a lightening strike as there was a lot of prolonged electrical activity in the sky. 

The weather seemed to be causing a few problems today. We weren't allowed to leave the building due to the amount of lightning. The rocket was set for launch but the weather needed to clear up before it could go ahead.  We waited along with the majority, in the cafe - we couldn't even sit outside to drink our coffees. With 30 minutes to go we were able to leave the building but it was still not safe to sit in the viewing area. We could see the rocket through a gap in the trees and whilst waiting for further information we started chatting to an American couple. As we chatted we began to get wetter and wetter. Harrison and I were prepared with hoodies today because we'd taken notice when our bus driver told us yesterday that it rained there every afternoon at the same time! Today though, the rain just didn't want to move on. It hung around and along with 3 other weather violations, people became despondent and started to catch buses back to the main visitor centre.  We held out until we heard from the officials that it had definitely been called off again. It was disappointing because the fault with the rocket had been fixed and as is often the case in the UK, it was the weather that had let us down. At least we hadn't arranged our trip specifically around the launch - it would have been an incredible unexpected experience. Bernard and I did come away with some free, unwanted mementos - I'm now the not so proud owner of 20 mosquito bites on my legs!

Our journey home was much faster this evening but rather disconcerting as we were heading straight for the relentless lightning flashes.

We stopped off at Walmart to pick up some groceries and I spotted these 'colourful' cakes:

The storm went on until 22:30 - Harrison was very relieved when it was over. He put the television on to divert his attention and came across this programme: www.bbcamerica.com/almost-royal/show/

I was very sceptical and thought we'd quickly be changing channel but it was actually really funny.

Day Three - Kennedy Space Center 1

Well the Verizon box wasn't fixed last night so we all had to decamp to the bedroom furthest away from it. By the time I got up at 6:30 the beeping had stopped - maybe the battery had finally died?

Now we know how to get Harrison out of bed by himself in the morning - plan a trip to Kennedy Space Center!! Usually he waits for me to go into his room and turn off his equipment (even though he could do it himself). Today I went in to get him up and his bed was empty! I momentarily froze as it was the last thing I expected to see but quickly realised that he was already in the bathroom. Every morning, Bernard and I have been sitting outside by the pool. I'm usually in position with book, coffee and toast by 7am. It's too hard to resist the opportunity of spending one or two hours with a book. Something that I seldom get the chance to do at home.

We were all ready to leave the house by 9:30am with the route programmed into the sat nav app. For the second day running we hit heavy traffic on the 192 so decided to divert onto a toll road instead. Our rationale was that not as many people would want to pay to use a road. We were proved right which meant the rest of our journey was very straightforward. There's a huge amount of road development going on in the area where we're staying and it seems that wherever we want to go, we encounter road works.  Nothing new to us! 

On entering the park Harrison announced that this is the best day of his life ever! When asked if it was even better than meeting Lewis Hamilton, he couldn't decide. Our first activity at the Space Center was 'Lunch with an Astronaut'. We were all shown into a large room with several round tables all formally set up for a two course meal. It was a buffet lunch which included salads, hot courgette and squash mix, garlic roasted mini potatoes, macaroni cheese, grilled salmon and chicken pieces. 

Dessert was a selection of mini tray bake cakes, cookies, jelly and melon pieces. Towards the end of our meal, astronaut Wendy Lawrence gave a presentation about life in space and then took questions.  She's been on four launches and it was extremely interesting listening to her.

As we left our windowless dining room we could see that the weather had closed in and the skies were very dark. We decided that we should go and see as many of the external exhibits as possible before the rain soaked us. Harrison wasn't impressed with this decision as there were a few rumbles of thunder in the distance. He kept asking to go inside but not via any metal structures. Bit tricky when the whole park is constructed from sheet and tubular metal! 

The nearest building was 'Angry Birds in Space' which was a good choice as it took his mind off the weather with the interactive games and activities. 

We were probably only in there for around fifteen minutes but when we came out the walkways were showing evidence of a heavy downpour. Next we went into an education centre (Exploration Space) designed to highlight some of the different types of careers in the space industry. 

There was a film presentation led by a NASA staff member. She'd learnt her script well but sounded rather like Stephen Hawking when delivering it. Bernard thought that it may have been part of her English language course. We weren't convinced that she actually understood what she was saying! Following this entertaining presentation Harrison wanted to go to the shop. He didn't have any trouble finding many souvenirs to spend his $350 on. In fact he got within 41 cents! In 16 years he's never parted with his money so readily. Considering that this was the main purpose of our visit we wanted to ensure that he bought everything that he wanted because it's a long way back from the UK!

By now the weather couldn't have been much worse - the rain was torrential and running down the roads. 

We were due to catch a bus to the Saturn firing room as there was a launch of SpaceX planned for this evening. We had no idea about this when we booked our tickets a couple of weeks ago so this would be an incredible coincidence if it was to go ahead. We got on our bus ( mainly to shelter from the rain as we'd left our raincoats back at the house) and started chatting to the driver. Despite the appalling weather outside, he was quite optimistic that the launch could go ahead. 

The weather over by the launch pads was clearing up quickly. We had a couple of hours to wait before launch so we went into the Saturn building to see a couple of films including a recreation of a launch. As we exited the theatre we were confronted by the rear of Saturn V. It was a breathtaking sight! 

Approximately half an hour before launch we took our seats in the priority launch seating (where the astronauts families sit) and waited patiently. Wendy was hosting another question session and we also heard feeds from the control centre.

 Unfortunately just before the 13 minute countdown was due, they postponed for another hour! Apparently there was a leak somewhere that needed to be investigated. There was a 53 minute window for take off. I've written most of this blog whilst waiting and they've just announced that launch is aborted - boo! There was just 10 minutes to go.

Day Two - Florida Mall

Harrison's plan for today was shopping. He'd seen some outfits for Bob ( his bear) on the Build-a-Bear website so we set off to find the nearest shop - the one in Florida Mall.  Once again the directions got us to the vicinity but it took us a while to work out how to get into the correct car park because it wasn't visible from the main highway. The inside of the mall reminded me very much of Bluewater but surprisingly for USA (where everything is bigger), this one was much smaller than back home.  First stop lunch in the food court:

Always smiling when there's pasta on the menu!

On our way to the bear shop we came across a shop full of Bernard's favourite sweets - M&Ms! He had great fun choosing from the huge array of colours:

Bob waited very patiently to get to his store and once in there he made sure that he didn't come out empty handed:

After a successful shopping trip we arrived home to find that there had been a power cut and our alarm was making irritating beeping noises! We called the management company who were able to instruct us over the phone how to reset it.  Unfortunately, shortly after the Verizon box started beeping too so we had to make another phone call.  We're still waiting to hear back........

Day One - Taking It Easy

After resisting my body clock's request to get up at 2am, I finally gave in at 5:50 local time. On arrival last night we quickly realised that there wasn't a welcome pack for us so a trip to the local WalMart was definitely number one on our priority list today. Fortunately we had picked up some bread and milk last night but forgot about coffee and tea.

The air conditioning in here is very effective so I decided to take my bread and water outside and sit by the pool. We think it must have rained overnight because as I sat down on a sunbed a large quantity of water poured out underneath and I got a very wet bottom! Beach towels soaked up the excess on the bed and Bernard and I spent a pleasant hour or so enjoying the early morning sun and observing the aqua aerobics session in the villa opposite! 

By 11am we were ready for our shopping expedition to get essentials such as kitchen roll, washing up liquid, cleaning products and not forgetting tea and coffee. The WalMart wasn't that big but it did have sooo many delicious looking products - most of which are really bad for us but we're on holiday .......

We returned with our supplies and this sandwich for lunch:

It was so big that there was plenty for all of us to share! The plates in the photo are large dinner plates to illustrate how big it is.

Here are some photos of the outside of our villa, our road and the complex. It's a gated community and although high density, it's very quiet. 

Look at the clouds! The drive in to Highgate Park.

Double security!

Anybody fancy going halves with us on this place? It's for sale for approximately £90,000.

Finally, this is our car:

We thought that we ought try one out seeing as ours is ready for collection at home! 

My long awaited mug of coffee :-)

 

We spent the afternoon watching the sky get darker and darker.  There were also a couple of light rain showers, infrequent flashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder. Despite the weather closing in on us, Bernard and I enjoyed a few short spells outside as it was still very warm. Harrison, on the other hand, refused to come out because he was very worried about the storm turning into a tornado or hurricane.  He would know what to do though, as he's already studied the emergency page in the guest folder and will be watching the special hurricane programme on television tonight! 

We're on our way!

Everything went so smoothly to start with! The taxi driver managed to locate the house (after a phone call to us for directions); on arrival at the airport we were fast tracked through check in (tried to check in online but because of Harrison extra needs this wasn't possible) and there was hardly anybody at security control so by 8:30am we were seated in Garfunkels awaiting Harrison's cooked breakfast.

Being the only healthy person out of the three of us, I pushed Harrison to gate 111 whilst Bernard accompanied the hand luggage in a special assistance buggy!  We were amongst the first to board the plane and had plenty of time to get settled before the remaining passengers boarded.  We'd organised for Harrison to have continuous oxygen throughout the flight so checked with the flight attendants that this was in place. They said that it would be set up approximately 15 minutes after take off because he was going to be connected to their ring main. 

Ready for take off

In time an attendant came with the nasal cannulae and attempted to plug them into the supply. After a few minutes of trying she decided to seek some help from another attendant. He had a go, also without success. They both disappeared with the reluctant equipment and after a few minutes returned and tried again. Still the connector wouldn't stay in place. They decided to see whether the port above Harrison's seat was faulty so tried other points around the plane.  By now they had quite an audience!  This activity continued with various attendants taking turns, disappearing and returning with different masks / cannulae but they just couldn't get any of them connected. We were all starting to feel rather stressed and began imagining 'what if' scenarios. Nothing worked for the attendants so as a last resort the captain was called!  It had just needed his magic touch because his first attempt at securing the tubing worked! We were extremely relieved because this had taken over an hour to resolve. Bernard and I could finally retake our seats and settle down to watch our first movie - Jack Ryan Shadow Recruit. 

Lunch: 

It was very nice! 

As we approached the Florida coast, Harrison was very excited to notice Cape Canaveral right below him.  He also pointed out all the baseball pitches, golf courses and possible car / drag racing tracks. Just hope he doesn't want to spend the next two weeks looking for them! 

 

We landed at about 3:20pm and the fun began. The american's really know how to welcome visitors to their country! We were the last off the plane as we had to wait for Harrison's wheelchair to be brought up to the door. The walkway to immigration was deserted except for one elderly lady abandoned in a wheelchair! If we could have helped her we would but already had our hands full with Harrison, his medical bag, a small wheeled cabin bag and a back pack. As we entered the immigration hall we found everybody who'd arrived from two transatlantic flights. It was just a sea of people filling the hall queuing to go through one of four(!) booths. We spotted a glimmer of hope - a special assistance lane with only a few families ahead of us.  We naively thought that we would soon be reclaiming our luggage that we could see beyond the hall going round and round on the conveyor belt. Wrong! Even though we were expected to be cross examined about our visit, we hadn't allowed for us all to be individually finger printed and photographed! That holding area was sooo hot and nobody was in a hurry to get us all through.

So, we get through the first check, collect the bags (by now the carousel has been turned off) and head for check number two. That was easy - two lines for four officers. Everybody seemed to join the long queue. Why? We chose the short one and barely had to stop. Through the double doors and somebody told us to put the bags we'd just collected onto another conveyor belt. We then followed everyone onto the transit and to the second baggage reclaim. Big mistake! The reclaim area was deserted except for one more family from our flight and another female passenger. They'd already been there a while. It was a good hour before there was any sign of our bags again. By now we'd already been trying to get out for over two hours! Next stop Alamo car hire. Guess what - another lengthy queue mainly due to people who either didn't have reservations or couldn't find their reservation number - aaarrrrgggh! Add to that the agents trying to sell upgrades and add ons and we were there for ages. By now we were very tired and finding it hard to remain civil! 

Car sorted; time to find the office to collect the keys for our house. Using the written directions given to us by the travel agent and the sat nav on our phones we easily located the address although it was a 30 minute drive. Rather worryingly the building was empty and up for lease! We were sure that this wasn't the correct building so we drove around the area looking for it but the sat nav was insistent that this was it! I finally went into the Radisson hotel to ask for directions - we had been to the correct address. We went back and saw a note taped to the door. 

The offices moved at the beginning of May to another area of Kissimmee. Really not happy now! Back to the freeway and off to the new office. Complex found, now where was the office? I've already realised that directions given get you to the vicinity but then you have to turn detective to find what you're actually looking for! A member of staff in the supermarket directed us around the side of the building and inconspicuously amongst a nail bar and estate agent there was the office. One advantage of its location was that there were only three other families in there so it didn't take long to get our keys. We finally opened the front door of our home at 20:50. 

These photos were taken on arrival so they are a bit dark: