Sat night at the car show Kissimmee FL

Saturday night was the last night in Orlando and during the week we had heard about an old car show held in Old Town Kissimmee. So we thought we would go down and investigate cars, you know how I am a car kind of guy. When we were there on Thursday there were hardly any shops open and hardly a soul about. I can tell you things are different on Saturday night. The cars started to arrive about 3:00 in the afternoon and arrive well into the evening (we stayed until 7:30 and they were still coming in), when we left there were at least 250 to 300 cars in Old Town quite a sight to say the least.

 Early afternoon

The break down was that there were allot of North American Muscle cars and a very good representatives of restored and good originals there. the surprising thing was there was only 2 English cars, a Bentley and a Bradford, there was 1 Italian, a late 60's Fiat Spider, several VW beatles and one 1934 Citroen the rest were American.

1934 Citroen.Unfortunately it was very dark and this was the best picture I could get. The owner was Roger a very nice man with many cars I hope we can connect and get a better picture.

There was about 10 Hudson's and they were having a club meeting in the restaurant we stopped for dinner at. Quite the demographic mostly over 65 into the late 80's. There was a gorgeous 47 Hudson that I drooled over, there was also a Nash Metropolitan in a sweet light yellow with white accent.

1947 Hudson

Nash Metropolitan

 
1952 Hudson Hornet 
Twin H Power

 

Through out the area's there were allot of stingray Corvettes and finally just before we left a 1960 arrived and was just stunning. Laura and I talked about it on the way home it was a toss up between the 59 T-Bird and the 60 Vette. Sorry for the poor picture of the vet it was the best I could do in the dark.

 

After the ride home we sat in the hot tub for a while and finished packing as the taxi is supposed to be there at 0h 600 the 0h stands for "oh my God its Early.

A lazy day in Orlando

Yesterday was a very long day with a lot of walking. so today was a SAT day. A walk to the Publix store for lunch and dinner supplies. Just up the road is a fruit stand that we walk through to get to the sidewalk on the main road. I have always heard and read that boiled peanuts were a southern delicacy, well I got the chance at the fruit stand today. I was going to buy a container of them when the shop owner said to try a couple first so we tried a regular and a spiced, well like the texture of chunky mud and the flavour of the worst offal you can imagine. Needless to say we decided to leave them in the pot and continue back to the condo.

As we walked to the condo it struck us that many plants were covered, with bed blankets, they never did come off  today.

A day at Cape Kennedy

Today was an early start (pickup at 7:45)for a trip to Kennedy Space Center. This is Florida and is warm,,,, right ??? well not really this morning was just above freezing and we had to walk about 1/2 mile to the Bestwestern for pickup. The bus trip was on a Grayline bus and lasted about 2 hours. The bus was a VanHool and I discovered the cleaning staff in Victoria are the best. We got quite a nice tour going out and the driver went out of his way to make every one happy.

Once we got to the KSC (Kennedy Space Center) we started at the Hall of Fame. Very nicely done except the non American astronauts don't seem to exist. Interesting but it is the American Astronaut Hall of Fame, just something I noticed. We continued to the LC-39 Observation Gantry and we were able to see most of the area that NASA uses. 30,000 acres set aside for NASA, 24,000 is used as a wildlife sanctuary and only 6000 is used by NASA for its projects. They also have a very active sanctuary group working on the rest of the reserve to protect the local species.

The Grayline bus driver delivered us to the Kennedy Space Center and then the KSC operated buses took over. Between the driver provided info and the onboard video's, timed to correspond to what we were seeing out the windows, we were kept up to date on everything outside the bus. Buses run every 15 minutes and you can get off/on at any stop and carry on to the next at your convenience.

At the second stop on the tour we saw Alan Shepard's white, 1968 corvette, an Apollo spaceship with its Saturn Rockets, the Instrument Unit, Command Module, Landing Module and Support Module. The entire structure is as long as a football field, and is 90% fuel tanks. A separate room held 20 (or so) years of development of spacesuits. Everything from flexible, chain mail woven fabric suits with nylon bladders to full metal hard cased exteriors with inner fabric suits, and many many hybrids. Video's of the lunar landing and so much more.

At the final stop, there were many choices and not enough time. but right away we got into a line, really we did, although I dislike line ups, and got into the Space Shuttle Simulator. What fun. The video and noise and vibration do make you feel like you are close to the space experience. Sorry no cameras or pictures were allowed.

One of the two IMAX theatres was down for repairs, so off we went to the hubble telescope show. A combination documentary of the deployment, repair, and ongoing maintenance and a view of the star systems, galaxies and other space anomolies from hubble made this a highlight of the day.

Back outside, a visit to the rocket garden, nature and technology display and the starfleet academy, and we ran out of time. Looking at the size of the Redstone Rocket, which was enormous for the fifties, I think a lot of amateur rocketeers now have access to the materials to construct something almost this big today. Back to the bus for a 2 hour nap as we go back to our condo.

Tuesday

Our intention was to get up early and book a couple of event for the rest of the week. Didn't get a really early start, but after coffee and breakfast we did get our tickets to go to the Kennedy Space Centre tomorrow. Pick up at 7:45, about a 15 minute walk from here. This should be good fun and we are both space travel fans.

We headed off to check out "Old Town Kissimmee", and on the

way noticed that there are a lot of empty buildings, restaurant spaces and even hotels! Obviously the recession hit here a lot harder than back in Victoria. Old town isn't much to see, at least midweek in the daytime. We will be back on Saturday evening when we hear it is a jumping place.

Back to our resort for pool/hot tub time. Met folks from Ontario, Melbourne (Australia) and Romania. Warm sunny weather, cold beer, good company, this is ok.

Monday a rest day in Orlando.

Today was a rest day and a late start was the order of the day.We walked about one and a half miles to the local Super Target store for groceries. The weather was great and we got our groceries when we went to walk back well there was a lightning and thunder storm and it was pouring cats and dogs. So we decided to do a little more shopping.

We eventually thought the rain was just about done so we started walking back. However the rain didn't agree and punished us with a downpour for about five minutes then it went away that was about it for Monday in Orlando

It is also hard getting used to not having Novi it just isn't quite the same, and there is no pet in the evening, bummer.

Travel day

Our exit from the ship was completed almost an hour in advance of what it was supposed to be. A 20 min trip to the Amtrak station got us there in lots of time for the train to Orlando.

We are sitting in the Amtrak station waiting for the train to arrive. I thought it would be good to sit down and catch up on the blog. I have been going through the past posts and finishing off the last couple of days posts. I know that train stations have the reputation of not being particularly nice places. This one is actually very nice, it is clean the staff is friendly and even the clientele is much better than expected and I am not the only one working on the computer.

We have made several stops now and I think I have seen the ultimate accessory. The bungi spender, holds up all types of pants and is fully adjustable to any length by making a shoulder loop which doubles as a handle, or you can hang your umbrella on it, it is available in many solid colours and patters to suit all attire. But wait were not done yet, get yours now and you can get pre distressed hooks, not sold in stored but only through this special offer. Each side sold separately Just had to share that with you. Yet an other adventure in our travels. Wouldn't life be boring with out characters. I don't think Laura will let me come home if I get one or a pair.

We have been traveling now for 8.5 hours and are still not at the end. We have just stopped because their is a brush fire ahead, shouldn't be stopped too long I hope. shouldn't be more than a little over an hour. We will then have to find our way to the lodging oh joy, who's idea was this any way? The nice thing is the train has an outlet so I can power up the computer unfortunately their is no WIFI.

Just got unpacked and sat down to finish the posts of the week. What a treat the Internet actually works like it should. Our adventures will continue though tomorrow will probably be a quiet one.

Last day of sailing

Firstly I would like to apologise for the gap in posts, the Internet on the ship is very marginal at best, and it certainly does not like to upload pictures to the blog, it is about a one in four success rate of getting the pics to the page. I purchased 90 minutes and I used them all up Saturday morning. It quite often took more than 8 min to download email. I considered purchasing more time but at $.75 a min I wasn't Happy (actually I was Grumpy), hey I am going to Disney World cut me some slack.

Today is the last day of sailing, tomorrow at 8am we will be in Miami and disembarking as they say. There is not much to look at off the ship except blue ocean (southern north Atlantic). It is very windy and rough and not quite as warm as one would think. There were a lot of people trying to sun bathe and there were a lot more people that were wearing long pants and hoodies.

It really hit us that today is the last day, there was a baggage mat on the bed and on top were baggage tags and customs forms, along with instructions on how and where to get off the ship.

We decided to go to the Emerald Steak house for our last dinner aboard tonight, we had been told by several that it was well worth the extra charge. Gosh I even put my blues and Ultra Suede on so they would let me in. Well it certainly was well worth it, they use specially wet aged beef, aged for an extra 20 or more days. The flavour and texture are far superb to your average or butcher shop beef. Laura had the Surf and Turf (4oz tenderloin and Maine lobsta) and I had the 8oz tenderloin, appetizer was escargot done five ways with a "real" Caesar salad. Desert....... yes we did. It was a 10 oz serving of cheesecake. Wow. Laura had a chocolate sampler, and although not a chocoholic reports that the chocolate ice cream and the tiramisu were both outstanding (and we have the recipe).

As we near port, feeling the need to find out what's been going on in the world,we turned on the TV and see that the weather across the south is cold with snow and ice! Oh my gosh, I hope the next few days in Florida stay reasonable. We aren't quite ready for winter yet.

Sunday is a travel day for us, disembark the ship, find the Amtrak station, travel 7 hours north to Orlando and settle into our new rooms for a week long visit to the mid Florida region.

Today on the Island of Grand Turk

We landed on Grand Turk today about 11AM so not an early start. We are going on a historical sojourn on this Island as well so we will see how it goes.We were able to get in to port just as the wind and waves started to increase, this caused a lot of people to be unhappy when they canceled all water activities. Laura and I were lucky in that we had booked an Island tour so it was a go for us. The guide was the best we have had since we started this trip, he had gone away to Miami for school and returned to the island. The island is 7 miles long and 2 miles wide and was once a US

military base now abandoned.

Their was a lot of doubt that the Ruby Princess was going to land but it did and 6000 people descended on the island that has a population of 3500. I thought our ship was big but the Ruby was even bigger.

The tours first stop was an old salt pond where they used to make salt for the US over the last 200+ years up to the late 1970's. We then stopped at a light house and poked around for about 20 min then returned to a pond that had some flamingo's having late lunch. There was an old wild horse they call Hightower and at thirty he is blind in one eye but other than that he looks great and even lived through the last hurricane in 2008. The houses did not fare so well and many are still being worked on.

Once the tour was over he returned us to the dock and said that the third bar up the beach was a local watering hole where the beer was $3.50 instead of the $5.00 at the cruise line owned bars,once that was accomplished back to the ship for lunch and a snooze.

This evening after returning from dinner Novi has done it again and I didn't see this one coming, she left us a crab, yes I am sure it is a crab, got it! wink wink nudge nudge.

Today was a day in San Juan Puerto Rico. It is a wonderful town with a lot of historical things to take in. We decided not to take a tour today and just get off the ship and walk around whatever part of town we could. As we were leaving the ship we met Bob and Kelly (the people we had dinner with last night), they are seasoned cruisers and asked us to join them, so we did.

We walked down Calle Fortaleza to the sea walk a real nice calm walk and not busy at all there were a couple of small stands getting ready to open for the stat holiday we then walked to the big church in old town and then on to the fort exploring a couple of small squares and buildings as we went. We then came to Fort El Morro a very old and large fort that dates back to 1592 the oldest in PR as the locals call it.

For $3 each entry to the fort was well worth it. there were exhibits of life in a Spanish fort and lots of information on the history as well. Several of the original cannons are still there and well patina’d.

After spending more than an hour there, we all met up and walked back to town and decided to have lunch. Yes even if it was free on the ship we would eat ashore. We asked a local where there was a good PR restaurant the reply was typical of the people of the Caribbean, "I will take you there" there were two, the first had a long line up so he said I will take you to a better one another block down the road.

To say he was right, well I don't know about the first, but we had the best roast pork I have had since the last family reunion and that is saying something. After lunch we then headed back to the ship as time was getting limited.

After getting back from dinner sweet Novi had worked her magic with the towels again, making Carnival Kate complete with nose and hair. I guess I will have to spend the $15 to get the book on how to do the creations. It has been a long hard day for me so I think I am going to call it a night. This is the Island that has caught our attention and I think I will return someday.

A day in St Thomas

Today was a tour of St Thomas USVI. Over the mountain to Magens Bay Beach for a couple hours of beach/sun time. Sadly, this was the day that 6 cruise ships hit town and many of us chose to go see this lovely beach. Traffic jam at all the viewing locations, but wow, that was the turquoise water we have heard about!

Magens Bay Beach

The driving here is also on the left but I noticed that 99% of the cars are left hand drive added to the

fact that the drivers are worse than those in Sidney or Oak Bay. The streets are all very narrow and the corners are sharp with little or no visibility so they use the horn a lot. There was a large delivery truck that kept the horn going all the way down a steep hill.

St Thomas

Our last stop was at Blackbeards Castle. It is a hotel/museum/rum distillery and has several historical buildings. The last of the buildings was the Hotel and Bar next to the Amber Museum. Lets see drinks or museum hmmm guess which one we picked. Note drinks are half as cheep as the ship. Then back to the ship for the remainder of the day, a long hot tub, dinner with a couple from Wizconson and finally blog time.

Blackbeard bronze

When we returned to our room from dinner Novi had left us our 2 chocolates a turned down the bed and left Mikey the monkey

Mikey

A day at sea

Today is a day at, sea so there is no gettin off the boat. We started by sleeping in and having a late breakfast, with lots of coffee. Surprising we were able to find a place with no one around to have eat instead of a rather crowded restaurant area, all we did was go up a flight of stairs in the dinning room to the fish and chip restaurant, I guess no one wants fish and chips for breakfast. We pretty much had it to our selves for almost an hour before any one else showed up.

I have to say, I now see how some people gain weight on these cruises. There is so much quantity and variety for types of food ranging from basic north american fare to Mongolian cuisine and pizza. The quantities are outrageous and it is all you can eat at multiple restaurants for one meal if you want, I have seen several that do that. Our favorite so far was the Mexican lunch in the Red Sail, it is mid ship on the 9th deck and close to all the action of sun burning.

Another thing we have noticed is the tanners or shall I say the burners, there are lots of them for sure. I look at it as though this is an oven with all these little loaves of bread that roll over every couple of hours and once all browned, they will go home for another year. Kind of reminds me of our trip to Republica Dominica a few years ago.

Cruise pets

Our room keeper is Novi and she introduced her self to us when we first arrived.

I think she said she was from Indonesia and she speaks very good English. I asked her to clean the fridge out, it was very unlikely that we would use the mini bar, and I needed some room for my insulin. Not only did she do that but she also left a sharps bio container this was so thoughtful and observant of her.

Every time we leave the room she comes in and tidies, puts out clean towels and makes sure everything is shipshape. The room is small and efficient, but has everything one could want. Including a private balcony with only room for two chairs, and one tiny table.

I know our pets are at home but we also have new ones here each night. Along with the bed turning and chocolates Novi makes little pets out of towels for us, hmmmm don't need to be walked, quiet, and undemanding how great is that?

Larry The Lobster

Earl the Elephant

Kermit the frog

Day 2

Downtown Nassau from deck 12

By 7am when we awoke to the alarm , that's 4 am in Victoria, we were already docked in the Bahamas. After struggling to get up at such an ungodly hour, we had a quick breakfast on the Lido deck and started our hunt for the gangplank to get ashore. It was one of those "you can't get there from here" experiences. But success, by 9 am we were on land and starting our guided tour of historical Nassau.

The Bahamas have been a sovereign nation since 1973, prior to that they were part of Great Britain. 700 islands make up. The Bahamas, although only 49 are inhabited New Providence ( Island and country capital), the island Nassau is on, has two forts, Fort Fincastle and Fort Charlotte. Both were carved out of the limestone by slaves back in the late 1700"s in preparation for an expected attack by France. However, Napoleon never made it and the British eventually took the cannons back to Great Britain.

Fort Fincastle

Our guide Audredge was telling us even though there is crime in the Bahamas there is one crime that has never taken place, according to him there has never been a train robbery. I thought that was very interesting, and unique. A drive through Cable Beach subdision and past the US Embassy, provided views of large, fenced, gated homes and gardens. The driver was entertaining, informative and even though he was sitting on the right hand side of the van, and driving on the left hand side of the road, was in complete control. Stop signs and speed signs seem to be mere suggestions. The government ministies of Health and Education as well as the College of The Bahamas were on the route as we returned to the harbour via the ghetto.

Today is a stat holiday so few opportunities for shopping arose. Back at the harbour we had a good view of Atlantis (on Paradise Island), and then in early afternoon we set sail again,

Atlantis on Paradise Island

Tomorrow we have a day at sea as we head 1,100 miles to the southeast to St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands.

After a long night flight we got to Miami. It was interesting that we were about 3/4 of an hour early and arrived at 6:30 baggage claim etc. was 1/2 hour also. Once we got our bags we started to look for our transportation to the ship, well not actually as planned, they don't show up until about 10:00 so we have a further 2 1/2 hours to kill. A trip to the departure area and a Dunkin Donut shop for breakfast makes the hotdog look like a gourmet meal now, but the coffee was great, really.

Miami airport is huge and busy, which is great from an entertainment perspective. Line ups for coffee, line ups for check in, line ups to get your baggage wrapped, and completely empty arrivals carousals.This airport sure does go through a lot of cling wrap. Fairly limited choice of colors, but Aaron did get a photo of the activity.

It’s 1:15 and we are finally on the Ship along with 2500 other people of shapes sizes and colours what a diverse group of humans all with the same goal “to have fun” can’t blame them what a wonderful place once you get past the lines and lines and more lines the saving grace is they took a page from Disney Land and the lines move surprisingly fast.

Even though we are on the Ship we can’t go to our room for another ½ hour. A drink and lunch will easily burn that up , oh yet another line.

Miami Beach

No more sleeps

Today is the first and all that is left to do is wait to take off to Miami. The weather in Victoria is crisp and clear hovering around the freezing point. Looking at Miami it is in the mid 70's and clear, and that is good enough for us.

The dogs know there is something going on and are quite uncomfortable about it, they get that way every time we go away, they stick to us like Velcro and constantly get in the way. We have spent today finishing packing and cleaning, not the most romantic start to a holiday but required none the less.

My older brother Peter took us to the airport, there is no point in hanging around so we went through the line and security so we could get the finest airport coffee and a gourmet hotdog, I told Laura I was going to take her out for an expensive dinner tonight. Some how I don't think this is going to be the highlight of the culinary experience of the trip, I will be very disappointed if it is.

On to Seattle and almost every thing is closed because it is New Years Day, Glad we had a hotdog in Victoria.