Writings from America (May 20th-28th)

May 20th 

I'm sitting in the same spot as before and its still lovely, although I lost my sunglasses so I'm having to squint to see the page. We're in the same hotel but we're leaving for Miami on Saturday. We're going to stay in dorms with other actual people! Hopefully there will be some people who speak English and notSpanish because there are lots of non English speaking people in this hotel which is fine for them but it means we haven't really met anyone yet, which also means that it's just me and Pete all the time-quite a test on a 3 months relationship! But we're doing surprisingly well.

We do seem to have switched genders though. Odd but true. I go on all of the scary rides and Pete wimps out. We went wake boarding at Wet n Wild (an amazing water park) and I managed to do it before Pete which resulted in the instructor teasing Pete. We went for a meal (at Bahama Breeze where Pete discovered his love for Strawberry Daiquiris) and I had the same meal as Pete, who thought it was way too spicy. I couldn't taste any spice in it. And to top it all off, Pete had a cold at the start of the week. He didn't make any fuss and passed it off as 'the sniffles. He passed it on to me and I feel like I'm dying. Classic case of man flu.

Here are the things that we have done in Orlando and my expert review:

Sea World- I guess its quite a bit better than the Sea worlds in England, but saying that, it is about 10x more expensive. $72. And most of the things you can do there cost extra. It's so big and commercial that you don't really have a good day. But the animals were lovely. (apart from the Manatees which I still think are quite ugly) The dolphin show was amazing, but the same cannot be said for the killer whale show. The actual whales were amazing, beautiful, scary animals, but most of the show was focused on a man who supposedly fashioned a whale tail necklace out of wood when he was a boy and followed his dream and everything was amazing and wonderful in his life because he followed his dreams and is now a whale trainer. He was very obviously an actor too. All of this part of the show there were no whales. I didn't like it. Pete did.

up-side down building

Wonderworks aka the upside down house- This was cool. It was a building that was built upside down, which lookedawesome and inside were lots of games and optical illusion interactive exhibitions. The first corridor you walked through made you feel like the room was slowly turning upside down. There were big bubble wands which you could make a bubble go round your head and a bed of nails which I did. (hurty elbows!) At the end, there was an arcade in the dark with UV lights and there was an indoor ropes course above the arcade. I really wanted to go on it and when we did, I got to the first platform and stood there for 20 minutes saying "I can't do it!" with Pete saying "you don't have to do it" and me replying "yes I do!" I got over the first rope and up the second, but I had to turn back after that because my hands were all sweaty so I couldn't grip the ropes properly.

Wet n Wild- the amazing water park. This was the best thing we've done so far. It was a lovely sunny day and there were lots of great rides. They were mostly rides which you were on an inflatable boat with another person. There were some in the dark like brainwash, which had a massive drop at the start and it dropped you into a giant swirling dark bowl with lots of strange lights and music. And our favourite, Disco, which was similar to Brainwash but the bowl was a mini night club playing 70s music. We did wake boarding which rounded up a winning day.

Universal Studios- I thought it was going to be a theme park, and Pete wasn'tlooking forward to it, but I was sort of wrong because there were a lot of rides, but the aim of the rides wasn't for a thrill or focused on the daring aspects that a theme park generally is, it was more focused on the film that it was portraying, which was good for both of us. There was a Jaws ride, which I would have been terrified of when I was younger (there was at least three children crying when a giant Jaws head attacks the side of the boat) and there was a Men in Black ride, where you had guns to shoot the aliens with (I got 26000 points. Pete got 111000 points, as he keeps reminding me) and my favourite- The Mummy ride (a roller coaster in the dark with fire and stuff.) All the streets were filled with movie scenes and old cars. I liked it lots. We went to the Hard Rock Cafe afterwards.

Joannes- we visited Pete'scousin and her boyfriend and two girls. She picked us up from our hotel and took us to a place called "Christmas town" to show us a chunk of American history. It was a place where theAmericans kicked out the natives on Christmas Day. I didn't enjoy celebrating this fact but the wooden shacks were nice. We got to Joannes house in the lovely suburbs and met her family who were also lovely. It was nice to have a change from the fake touristy view that we had of America from being in Central Orlando. We met Pat's (Joannes boyfriend) friends; a few middle aged men who Pete told me would class as 'rednecks'. They were cool and we sat in their yard talking about the world and its people. A car pulled up and one of the men said to me "you're gonna meet Elvis now." I was slightly confused and even more confused when in the middle of this mundane setting, a man fully dressed in Elvis costume with a quiff and a grin stepped out of the car. Apparently he was called Steve and he had a normal job by day, but by night he became Elvis at a downtown bar. Odd. We got a picture with him.

All in all, I have loved Orlando. Even so, I will be glad of a change of location because there is only so much of the Disney, fairytale, 'anything is possible if you follow your dreams crap' you can take.

Miami here we come.

May 23rd 

Oh dear, we're in Miami.

It's 'just awful' as Pete would say. It's like a seaside town that's gone a bit wrong. Well, a lot wrong. There are a lot of drunks and lots of places to drink and eat for stupid amounts of money, but no supermarkets and absolutely nothing nice. We're in a hostel which has somehow been voted the best hostel in the USA. Why, I have no idea. It's dirty, the rooms are tiny and the staff are horrible.

We walked into the hostel after just having got to Miami by greyhound bus. We had just shared our cab with two lovely girls from Norwich (it's not their fault) and so we were in an optimistic mood about the journey ahead. We thought we might stay for a week in Miami. Oh how our minds changed when we walked into the hostel. It was a bar with lots of drunk people to step around and over and we went to the reception at the back and a rude polish woman hurriedly took our details and gave us a room card key and linen. We went into the room and it was a tiny room with three bunk beds crammed into it. There were clothes and towels everywhere and it was quite obvious that I was the only girl. A man came in and said hello. He was probably the scariest and creepiest man I've met. He was fromTexas and looked a bit like an alien in a mans body. I didn't want to stay there, but we had no choice as we had already paid.

We met the other 3 boys who were nice, but they went out all night drinking and came back to the room at 5am talking very loudly and turning the light on (which resulted in me swearing at them quite loudly in my sleepy anger) The boy in the bunk below me brought a girl back and the less said about that the better.

The beach was the only good thing about it.

I payed $1.50 for an apple, $5.99 for a bottle of water and Pete spent $10 on a phone card that didn't work.

We are now waiting at the greyhound station for a bus which will take us 9 hours away from Miami to Daytona Beach.

Bye bye Miami. Good Riddance.

May 28th

On the greyhound to New York now, 23h 15m. The greyhound isn't as bad as I though it would be; it's air conditioned and doesn't smell funny-what more can you ask for? Pillows maybe. More leg space maybe. Nicer staff maybe, but all of that is more that bearable for the cost and convenience.

Daytona Beach was beautiful. So much better than Miami! It was a small town with a massive beach. The sand was the softest sand I've ever seen or felt. The sea was slightly rough with lots of wave breaks- perfect for surfing, or body boarding if you can't surf. We also went para sailing which was really cool. It was a parachute with a smiley face on it suspended on a boat which pulled you along so you went really high. You felt like a bird and you could see for miles. We sun bathed and swam and managed to spread cheerios andspaghetti-os all over the room. Fun fun fun in the sun sun sun. I could have stayed in Daytona for a lot longer but we've got to move; We have booked a coach tour across Canada which will start in New York in a couple of days.