| Wednesday 3 October | |
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Day 19 - Wednesday 3rd October 2007 Air Boats/Celebration/Mini Golf Yippee….the hat was found!!! Michael set off this morning with Brayden to ‘quickly’ pick it up -1 hour later he got home. He got a first hand view of how good we had it yesterday due to the rain, the crowds were just huge at Sea World today apparently. He took ages to queue up to get in, and then queue again to get a pass to allow him in for free to collect the hat. Funny response when I rang this morning to see if it was there. I described it as a ‘rainbow hat’. The guy says to me ‘well I have a hat here that’s blue/orange/red/green/yellow/purple….I’m like ‘yes, that’s a rainbow hat’. They are very literal here, don’t cope with any comments slightly off their understanding. Once we had the hat back, we finally set off with the Lucas’ (almost lunch time by now) for Air Boat rides (the boats like on ‘Gentle Ben’, that shoot across water/reeds/land). The Lucas’ have hired a Honda Odyssey this week, but it’s much bigger than our Odyssey. Our kids love to go in it, so quite often Michael and Karen take all 5 kids, and Michael and I drive along behind childfree (what a life…..we have to resist temptation to ‘get lost’). We were in the lead this time, and I was so impressed that we navigated correctly. I was picturing the victory dance I was going to do once we arrived because we made it there without one wrong turn, and then I started chatting to Michael and realised we just missed the turnoff into the air boat place……so yet another u-ie and back we go. Have to save the victory dance for another day. Air boats were fantastic, the driver really motored, amazing how they can zip over huge reeds and water, we really enjoyed our 30min ride. Saw 3 gators, including one baby just out and about in the water. It’s so warm now they say the best time to see them is early morning or evening, as they try and avoid the sun – and of course our ride was at 12.30pm, so we were lucky to see that many. Afterwards we had lunch at the restaurant there, including ‘gator tails’ (tasted like chicken/fish). We then headed to check out a local ‘Super Target’, it was big of course, but we were disappointed, not as good or cheap as Walmart….still took us an hour to get out of there though. Michael Lucas had a good theory, American shopping is like American football - 15 mins of shopping somehow ends up taking an hour. Sometimes it really hits you (like when you’re walking round another huge shop), the rampant consumerism here is overwhelming, there are just so many versions of absolutely everything imaginable. We then headed to the township of ‘Celebration’. The Lucas’ had been there yesterday and wanted to show us, Madeleine described it well, the houses were all like the ones in the ‘Cat in a Hat’ movie, all picture perfect, with their perfect paintwork and manicured gardens……bit Stepford Wives actually. It freaked Michael L out, rest of us quite enjoyed it. Lots of houses had pumpkins and other Halloween decorations out, I would love to see it at Christmas time - they even have a ‘Wisteria Lane’. At their central lakeside area they have lots of rocking chairs set up so you can sit back and relax, all enjoyed that one. Then it was off to the mini golf place near the hotel for the kids to have a game, something else that had been on our to do list for this trip. Karen and I came back to the resort with Samson and made dinner, the Michaels took the rest of the kids golfing. Plan was to get the kids in bed early, but somehow it still ended up being 10pm before they were down. Off to Animal Kingdom with Lori-Lee & family tomorrow. |