Adventures in Florida (with pictures)

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Flying to Florida...


Speed 0, altitude 5 feet?
Gee, I do the altitude 5 feet every year going to GCRF... I thought this would better.
Should I worry the flight home started at 10 feet, when this one was at 5. Did the tide come in? Was the plane taller? It wasn’t on the inside, I know that much.

We stayed at a nice enough place in Orlando.


Like every place I’ve been to in Florida, the humidity makes it moldy, there are bugs and it feels damp.
The place was a bunch of different buildings with gardens, pools and fountains between them.
There were lots of little lizards running all over the place.


At one point, just before the rain, I saw more than a dozen of them between me and the front lobby. When I walked over there it was like watching parts of the pavement get out of my way.

It is right on International Boulevard. That’s like (at least to me) one long strip mall/gift shop/tourist trap/food court/side show.


You can find flying saucers...


Mammoths behind palm trees...


Miniature golf playing alligators. (photo didn’t come out on that one.) Edit: I did get a photo of it off of the cellphone camera: http://fbhjr.livejournal.com/113472.html

But, not lunch.

Actually, my wife says that a sign that says “Miniature golf/live alligators” does not mean the gators play the golf. But, that’s what I got out of it. Apparently if they tie the gators fight it out as another sign assured me there would be alligator wrestling.

There were lots of restaurants too. But, very few of them open. Almost all of them didn’t open until 5. I guess they are so sure you’re at a theme park if you’re in Orlando, that they don’t bother.
The ones that are open are either burger places, chain places like the rest of the US, or both.

For breakfast, I had walked over to the glowing french fries of what tells me it is “The Worlds Largest McDonalds”.


It was large. Large enough to have a gift shop in the middle of the first floor. Large enough that, like most drive through McDonalds, you gave your order to one register, then walked around in a line to pay at another place, then go to a third for the food.
Once was enough for a place like that.

We did find a nice steak place that was open, despite being noon. It was across the street from the “Wet and Wild” water park, so maybe that counted as enough of a theme park that they could be open close to it.

After lunch, we went back to the hotel.


We spent most of the time watching the gymnastics of the Olympics. I did go to a best buy to get a new charger for the laptop. (My third if anyone but me is counting.) But, other than that, we hung around until evening and the party.

We got in better clothes and set off.


If you don’t know of my family’s weather curse, you might be surprised to know that despite being on the edges of a hurricane that wouldn’t go away, all day it was sunny and hot.
We left the hotel to go to my cousin’s party, it became pouring rain.

My cousin’s place was less than two miles away. Her husband described it as “a tower on a lake surrounded by a moat.”


We didn’t know it was gated until we got there and couldn’t get in. As it was raining very hard, we called and had the gate opened rather than get out and use the intercom.


It was a nice party.
There was lots of food.




There were also lots of people


Almost as soon as we got there, the rain stopped. (I’m not kidding about it being a curse you know.) So, a few of us took to the balcony as it was less crowded and noisy.


Of course, someone 3 floors above us decided to clean off their balcony as we sat there, so more water, flowers and other things rained down past us as we sat there.


I tried to “spot the gator” in the lake while we talked, but all I could find was a turtle and some birds.


Back over on “International” they have a huge slingshot. I’m talking larger than buildings. For $60 you can have yourself flung up into the air on it.

The little dot is the thing the person is in, and that isn’t at the top of the shot, only where I could catch it.

To give scale of it.


You can see the glowing “arms” of it over the tops of buildings.

I can’t really seen enjoying that sort of thing, but we saw a lot of shots go off while we sat there, so I guess folks like it.

The other thing we did while visiting was look through “The Collection”. My cousin’s husband has spent a lot of time collecting things. And, it is a very impressive collection. I’ve been to museums where they didn’t have as nice a collection as he has. (Good to have the moat I guess.)







The last one is the “elephant” collection. There are a lot of them there.

My cousin’s husband, gave a tour for us of some of the ones he particularly liked, or we wanted to know more about.




Ones that stand out for me were:

The “Roman” collection that had coins, little carved Roman Eagles and some of the roller stamps I liked so much at the Metropolitan museum this spring.


The Lama bone.


No, I don’t mean llama.

The carpet from Afghanistan when the Russians were invading and they wove in things like the attack helicopters and tanks.




Despite all the stuff they have, impressive as it can be, we were there for my cousin’s 40th wedding anniversary. She still had her wedding dress.


And, she and her husband put on a pretty good party.


It was a good time. The best part was visiting with my cousins. And, I got to visit with more of them then I have in a while. Some I really haven’t had a chance to talk with in a few years.
We are pretty spread out. MA, MD, TN, FL. It’s too bad we don’t get together more often.