Tourist Sites

Good evening all - yes, despite the clock just turning over to 6:00pm (which means 11:00am Wednesday in Melbourne, and 9:00pm Tuesday in the eastern USA) and the sun still shining brightly in the San Francisco sky, I'm going with good evening, as a lot has been packed into today, Sarah's birthday!! The unwritten rule of "never reveal a lady's age" prevents me from saying how old she turns today - that, and she's sitting next to me watching me write!! Perhaps she may tell you herself later in this blog - yes, Tuesday June 23rd. with only about 53 hours to go in our American Adventure, is the time that one Sarah Jane Lynn is going to make her blog debut!!!!

But before we do (and I revert to the normal teaser rule of saving what everybody wants to see until later in the blog), let's go over a quick (remember - five bucks for twenty minutes, although I brought a prepaid card today which gives me sixty minutes for twelve bucks - bargain!!) recap of the day's activities. Breakfast was on the house today - it was part of our accommodation package here at the Pickwick Hotel, so we ventured into Little Joe's Restaurant in the hotel foyer, and picked any item off the menu. The Ham and Egg Sandwich, with hash browns (not the square hash browns that Aussies think of - this is more like a potato put through a cheese grater then fried, and is quite tasty), was the single greatest breakfast I've eaten in America, and almost put thoughts of white Up bread toasted with Vegemite into the back of my mind!! (I've got a new craving - Aussie sausages, in bread, cooked on the barbie - it must be this summer weather!!). After that, and Sarah's fried eggs, bacon and hash browns were consumerd (well, devoured, the Eating Machine is back with a vengenance having aged another year), we stepped out into San Francisco, headed for a short stroll to where a double-decker bus was waiting to pick us up to give a guided tour of San Francisco.

I'm sure you've all seen the open-air tourist double-decker buses (if you've been to New York or Sydney, you could hardly miss them), which offer the ability to either stay on the bus as it gives you a narrated tour around your specified city, or you can hop off at any number of designated stops?? That's what we took today throughout San Francisco - and it was good. To me, there's not many things to top travelling in an open-air fashion, be it bus, ferry or otherwise, and especially when you get a sunny day that's not too hot (I don't think it would have gotten above 70 degrees today - which is about 22 degress Celsius, as San Francisco never really heats up). It showed us all of the major San Francisco downtown landmarks, but the real highlight of the bus was when it passed through the downtown city boundary, and headed for a red-coloured bridge that looked strikingly familiar!!! Yep, the bus took us to a look-out point where we could see the Golden Gate Bridge, then took us on a ride over the bridge, then back over towards San Francisco. It was pretty awesome to go over it, but this was the one disadvantage of the open-air bus arrangement, as it was bloody windy and cold going over the bridge - so much so that I had to take off my beloved Red Sox baseball cap to stop it being a resident of San Francisco Bay!! The views from the bridge weren't as breathtaking as they could have been, as it was still reasonably early in the morning and the morning fog hadn't yet cleared over the bay, meaning that both downtown San Francisco and Alcatraz weren't at their picturesque best. We disembarked off the bus in San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf district - an area with heaps of shops and eateries, and headed for Pier 39, where we were to meet a connecting shuttle to the next, and major, of our activities for the day. We had some time up our sleeves though, so we wandered around Pier 39 for a while, where the fog had cleared up and we were able to take photos (which, given that I'm on a public computer, can't be uploaded, but will be shown when we get back to Oz on the weekend) of Alcatraz and of San Francisco's sea lion population, which have an area at Pier 39 where they can "beach" themselves on a series of floating pontoons and sun their bodies, or have play-fights, as most seemed to be doing. We even took in lunch at the aptly named Sea Lion Cafe, where we had great views of the sea lions, Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge to accompany us (after one of our "random American" photos for the day, one of our best so far with Alcatraz featuring in the background).

After lunch, and a stop at a souvenir shop (where I couldn't help myself, and bought a Red Sox hoodie), we waited at the taxi rank for Pier 39 for our connecting shuttle to.....the San Francisco SeaPlane. One of Sarah's dreams for today was to take a helicopter ride over San Francisco - well, I went one step better and got the less noisy, better for photos Seaplane to do the honours. We were picked up (or, the "Kelly's" were picked up) and taken, along with an English couple, to the seaplane base in Sausalito, a suburb of San Francisco, which meant a less-windy ride over the Golden Gate Bridge again, and loaded into the plane for what was an awesome 35-minute plane ride (the plane was a seven-seater Fokker Friendship, but there were only five of us in there, so all was good) over San Francisco and it's surrounding areas, allowing us to view, and photograph, San Francisco from up high (and I wish I could show you the photos now, as they are pretty awesome)!! This was another of those activities that we both really enjoyed, as it was a bit of a departure from the normal kind of touristy-thing, and seemed to be over far too quickly for both of our likings.

When we landed and re-entered dry land (the plane takes off on water. so we had to walk along a dock that swayed with the tide a bit), we were shuttled back to Pier 39 at Fisherman's Pier, and jumped back on the hop-on, hop-off bus to our original stop, passing through some pretty interesting San Francisco sites on the way. After a visit to the Westfield shopping centre next door to pick up another part of Sarah's birthday present which was only released today (she'll tell you more about that shortly), as well as looking for another suitcase to bring all of our extra purchases home with us (no luck yet, couldn't find anything under $90, which is far too rude for what we need it for - no matter, the souvenir stores that specialise in 3 for $15 San Francisco t-shirts will look after us), we arrived back here at the Hotel Pickwick, which brings us to this point here. Dinner will be on the cards shortly - not sure where yet, in my role today as "birthday slave", I'm waiting to be told what to do in this regard), then I think Sarah has something else planned, which she is going to research on the Internet shortly.

Before she does though, I'm going to depart the floor for the night and say my goodbyes - I will return tomorrow night from Los Angeles (the plan for tomorrow is to take Highway 1 from San Francisco to Los Angeles - reportedly one of the most beautiful drives in America), as ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, it is my great pleasure to, on the anniversary of her birth, introduce to you for this first time in these blog pages to describe her birthday and her present haul in greater detail...the one, the only, Sarah Jane Lynn...all yours, honey!!

Well did I get spoilt today. Most of my presents i already knew about due to being there when he bought them but there was one in particular that I was no around for and this is a gold necklace with a heart on it with diamentes and 3 coloured stones on it which I adore. The last minute present was a Janet Evanovich novel which was only released today and the 15th in the series.

Off to dinner now (editors note - the Eating Machine grow restless), so goodbye from San Francisco.

Good evening folks, from a pay internet kiosk just outside the Grand Canal Shops here at the Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, where we may have suffered a major blog malfunction.

Twenty minutes ago, everything was looking OK - we had just finalised our hotel bookings and driving directions for our trip to San Francisco starting tomorrow, and I was just about to start on today's blog entry, when the problem I've been having with the wi-fi connection here at the Venetian struck again, in that the computer shut itself down to safeguard against a system crash, however there was a difference this time - it hasn't fired back up since. Calls have been made to my IT support back in Australia - ie. my brother Daniel - but it looks like the computer can't be fixed without Dan looking at it, short of blowing away the hard drive and starting again, which would knock out all of our photos (which Sarah still has on her camera, thankfully) and all of her iPod songs, so I'm reticent to do that.

What that means, is that I may not have the facilities to continue writing the blog. Thankfully, after tonight we only have three more nights in America, so it's better to have happened now than at the start of the trip. Hopefully, our accommodation from here on in will have some sort of pay internet stations, so we can at least report in to say that all is well and check e-mails, comments etc (so keep commenting folks, we'll still get them)!! Luckily, not much happened today, as we basically had a "shopping" day at the Las Vegas Premium Outlet mall, but Sarah was going to make her blog debut tonight and outline the massage she had today at the Canyon Ranch Spa here at the Venetian (and Mum and Nan, we had the photo of Sarah in the top that you brought her to put up here too)!!

I'm just about out of time here, so I will have to bid you adieu for tonight, and hope that either a miracle happens and the computer regains life (it won't boot up the Windows start-up sequence), or that the Pickwick Hotel in San Francisco can look after us on the internet front. We'll try and get something up here tomorrow night, but I can't vouch for quality or quantity. Until then, folks, we are still both safe and well, so there's nothing to worry about!!

"Well, finally”, I can hear you saying. Allright, I may have been a little lax in the timing (not my fault entirely, but I’ll explain as the blog goes on), but you’re going to get an added bonus with this entry, as you will be getting TWO, count ‘em, two entries in one. In this blog entry, I’m going to cover Friday 19th June – our day at the Grand Canyon and subsequent drive to Las Vegas, as well as today, Saturday 20th June and the happenings of Las Vegas. I write this from the air-conditioned comfort of our suite at the Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, easily the fanciest digs we’ve stayed in so far – I’ve called it the Christine Suite, as it’s a suite that my Mum would feel right at home in.

But let’s rewind a touch, and talk about yesterday (Friday) morning, which started with the crow call – or the train horn, more appropriately – at 6:00am in Flagstaff, Arizona. Bit rude, I know, but the plan was to get up to the Grand Canyon early to try and beat some of the crowds. After getting ready and having breakfast at the Grand Railroad Café (a whopping great New York steak and eggs to fuel me for the day, whilst Sarah had an omelette that Steve Hooker would have a hard time pole vaulting over), we left for the Grand Canyon just after seven, expecting to be there not long after eight. It took a little longer than that though – it was about an eighty-mile trip, and there were some slow speed zones getting out of Flagstaff, so the trip took a little longer than I thought it would – although going past old mate Fred Flinstone at a little town called Valle on the way helped break up the drive!!

We didn’t actually get all the way to the Grand Canyon though, as we stopped at a little town called Tusayan first – about five miles from the Canyon itself, and home of an IMAX theatre playing a show called “Inner Secrets of the Grand Canyon”. We stopped and watched the movie – we had just missed the 8:30am screening, so we hung around for the 9:30am screening. The show was pretty good – as all things in IMAX seem to be – and told some of the history of the Grand Canyon, it’s former inhabitants and the men that first navigated the Colorado River through the Canyon. After the half-hour show though, our appetites for the real thing were sufficiently whetted – Sarah practically ran to the car once the movie had finished – and we set out for the Grand Canyon.

The Grand Canyon is in its own National Park, which is governed by a section of the US Government, so there’s an entry fee to get in, which was fully expected. $25 per vehicle was the charge, which is pretty good in my view. We were smart about parking too. We had already figured out that the second car park – Parking Lot A – was going to be the way to go, as we figured that the first parking lot we would come across, near a section of the Canyon called Mather Point, would be choc-a-block with people trying to park at the first lot they saw!! True to form, there was a bottleneck of twenty cars searching for one spot at the Mather Point car park, so we smiled and waved at them as we sailed past (using the term “waved” is borrowing some literary license – I was only waving with one finger!!!) and into the almost-empty Parking Lot A!!!

If you don’t like walking, then the Grand Canyon is not for you, as to get the best views, even from the rim of the Canyon, then a little bit of leg work is required. Ideally, you would spend a couple of days in the Canyon and hike down into it, but walking around the Rim was plenty for a couple of fit specimens like Sarah and I – I was fairly stuffed after a pretty steep ascent at one point!! The Grand Canyon do offer a series of shuttle buses to get you from point-to-point as well, which can be a big help (yesterday wasn’t a particularly hot day, but fatigue can set in pretty quickly regardless). A tip if you’re heading in the Grand Canyon direction – keep yourself hydrated by drinking plenty of water or sports drinks, as there’s not a lot of places to buy them once you’re up there on the Rim looking for the best shots!!!

We explored the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, easily the most popular for tourists, as it is open nearly all year round. The North Rim is only open from May through November, and can be a bit easier to get around, but whilst it is only eleven miles (seventeen kilometres) from the South Rim to the North Rim as the crow flies, the fact that the crow has to fly over a bloody big hole between the two rims means that should you want to drive from the South Rim to the North Rim, then it’s a five-hour, 215 mile drive!! The South Rim is just fine, don’t you worry about that, but I only recommend the North Rim for those travelling directly from states north of Arizona.

So, to the Grand Canyon itself. How do you describe the beauty of the Grand Canyon?? It’s hard to define it under a single term – you really have to see the scenery, and how the hues of the landscape change as shadow sets in and out – to be able to find the right words. I saw it, and even I struggle to define it. “Breath-taking” is a good start – some of the views are absolutely awesome, and we only scratched the surface of it, as we skirted only the rim of the canyon. Below are some of the photos we took – you’ll notice our mugs ruining the landscape in some of the shots, including our “random American” picture, which was actually taken this time by a family from Canberra also holidaying in the States – I nearly shed a tear when I heard the mother’s Ocker twang in her accent – so you can judge for yourself this beautiful part of the American landscape!!!

We spent a good portion of the day at the Grand Canyon (and we have heaps more photos which we will show you when we get back to Oz), with the trusty Altima pulling out of Parking Lot A just after 3:00pm, pointing in the direction of the town of Williams, Arizona, then back onto I-40 and headed for Vegas. The trip, according to our GPS, would take the best part of about four-and-a-half hours, meaning we would be in Vegas by about 7:30pm. Given that we hadn’t stopped for petrol since lunch on Thursday at Grants, New Mexico (which I mentioned in Thursday’s blog, if you haven’t read that yet), I thought I’d pull into Williams and fill up. Wrong move. Advice for young players – make sure you fill up in Flagstaff, or have enough petrol to get you about 20 miles past Williams to some of the smaller towns just off I-40. I think the people of Williams must be reading the blog, and said to themselves “hey, that Aussie fella is passing through here and will probably need petrol, so let’s take him for a ride”. And taken I was – petrol was $3.17 per gallon, easily the most expensive I have purchased in America. As such, I only put twenty bucks worth in, figuring that it would make sure I got to Vegas with no worries. I cursed a fair lick when we got twenty miles down the road and petrol was running at $2.67 per gallon – I thought such words would never spew from the mouth of a naïve, country Victorian, Christian-raised lad!!!! We pulled off Interstate 40 at a little Arizona town called Kingman – again, a place probably no bigger population-wise than Sarah’s home town of Orbost, but with every chain motel, petrol station and fast-food restaurant you could think of – and headed down Highway 93, which takes you 100 miles into Las Vegas, and also over the Hoover Dam. I’m going to quote directly from Wikipedia about the Hoover Dam, as I didn’t know much about its origins until I just looked them up – Wikipedia is a bloody handy resource, an internet encyclopedia for those unaware, located on the internet at http://en.wikipedia.org

“Hoover Dam, originally known as Boulder Dam, is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada. When completed in 1936, it was both the world's largest electric-power generating station and the world's largest concrete structure. It was surpassed in both these respects by the Grand Coulee Dam in 1945. It is currently the world's 35th-largest hydroelectric generating station. This dam, located 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada, is named after Herbert Hoover, who played an instrumental role in its construction, first as the Secretary of Commerce and then later as the President of the United States. Construction began in 1931 and was completed in 1936, more than two years ahead of schedule. The dam and the power plant are operated by the Bureau of Reclamation of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981, Hoover Dam was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985. Lake Mead is the reservoir created behind the dam, named after Elwood Mead, who oversaw the construction of the dam.”

So there’s the information about the Hoover Dam – another pretty impressive place to view, and we had plenty of time to view it, as well, as traffic is a pain in the proverbial from about twenty miles before the Dam, and then as you cross over it v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y in a single lane of traffic at about zero miles per hour!! The Arizona Department of Transport have decided in their wisdom to build a four-lane both ways bridge over the Hoover Dam to ease the traffic congestion for people driving to Las Vegas, and whilst this is going to be a fantastic idea once it is up and running, it wasn’t much help for us driving through their last night, and it took us about forty minutes to drive a couple of miles over the Hoover Dam – having a security checkpoint a couple of miles away doesn’t help, where the pick-up trucks that SO MANY AMERICANS HAVE (Aussies – think utes on steroids) that look the slightest bit suspicious. Knowing what was going on, but not sure if I had to hand over license and registration etc, I wound down the window and gave the young constable organising the show the biggest dose of Ocker I’ve unleashed this trip – a “G’day”, a bit of “what’s goin’ on, mate” and the like, enough to make him smile, explain that it’s a “security checkpoint, sir” and wave me on through!!! The slow drive over the Hoover Dam gave Sarah plenty of time to take photos though, and here’s a couple of them, including the bridge that is being built.

After crossing the Hoover Dam, we travelled the thirty miles into Las Vegas (with the sun in that annoying position that when you flip down the sun-visor on the car, it still gets underneath it), and thanks to the GPS doing a sterling service, drove straight into the Venetian Hotel and Casino and into the self-parking area. After driving around there for about ten minutes and not finding a park, or a way to go to find the upper parking level, I got fed up and drove to the valet level, where the valets parked my car with no problems (and no dollars changed hands, an added benefit). We grabbed our luggage and worked our way through the maze that is the Venetian – past shops, restaurant and the casino floor to the main entrance and the check-in counter. It took us a good twenty minutes waiting in line to get to the check-in counter, so thankfully things were efficient when we got there. We then headed up to the sixth floor of the Venezia tower to our room – a Deluxe King Suite, with a king-sized bed with it’s own flat-screen TV, a sunken lounge room with another flat-screen TV, an L-shaped five-seater couch, a desk with phone, copier and printer (and somewhat dodgy wi-fi – more on that later), and a small table and chairs. Then there’s the bathroom with two sinks, a separate bath and shower and ANOTHER (albeit small) flat-screen TV. Like I said earlier, a Christine suite!! After getting settled, we went downstairs to find something to eat, and got no further than a gelato stand that has twenty-four different flavours of lactose-free sorbet, which saw Sarah go weak at the knees and say “this is my dream shop”!! We had a sorbet, took a walk down the Strip to have a look around, checking out Treasure Island casino and the surrounds for a bit, then came back up to the suite, nice and stuffed after realising exactly how long the day was!!! I put the small apology post on the blog site that you saw below, not having the energy to sit up and pen the above last night, and retired for the night, knowing that the alarm wasn’t going off this morning!!

Now for Saturday, and waking up unassisted at about 9:30am after a fantastic sleep in our king-sized bed!! I got up and started writing this blog entry, but experienced a few problems with the computer, being that one of the drivers (or something like that) that is needed to power the wi-fi connection playing havoc with my laptop and frustratingly causing it to turn the computer off of it’s own accord, which got old very quickly – especially after I thought I had the problem covered and was writing away happily, only for the laptop to just turn itself off again. I’ve isolated the problem – if I turn the wi-fi connection off, there’s no problem, so this blog has been written on Microsoft Word then transferred over to Travellers Point, with the photos transferred the same way!!
At about 11:30am I gave up with the blog, vowing to write it later (reasoning that Australia wasn’t out of bed on Sunday morning yet, so it was OK), and we headed out to see what Las Vegas had to offer. First stop was again the sorbet shop, where the Eating Machine was de-railed after ordering a double scoop, but not being able to finish it off!! After that, first port of call was the Venetian’s replica of Venice’s Grand Canal, to head for a gondola ride. First, here’s some photos of the Venetian, and their re-creation of the streets of Venice. Note that most photos look like we are outside – where you see blue skies and clouds, we are actually inside!!!

The Venetian have two different gondola rides – one inside, under the painted ceiling, and one outside under the real skies of Vegas. Given that the weather was sunny without being too hot (and because we were sensible and had applied sunscreen before we went out), we chose the outside gondola ride. It’s a four person ride, at $16 a head, or you can hire a private two-person gondola for $64. That is, if you are anyone else apart from us!!! We had two groups of three in front of us in line, then only a group of four behind us (it’s usually four people per gondola), so we were bundled into to the gondola on our own!!! The ride was nice and calm, taking about twenty minutes around an artifically-made course, with the gondolier singing in Italian for some of the way around – including an early “Happy Birthday” to Sarah (it’s on Tuesday 23rd, for those of you wanting to send comments, e-mails and gifts of cash and jewellery to save my pocket-book!!) in Italian, which was really nice. Here’s a couple of photos – us on the gondola, and the view from the ride!!

After the gondola ride, we went for a walk down the Strip again, checking out a few of the casinos and just enjoying the vibe of Las Vegas. It’s interesting to see people walking the streets with beers and assorted alcoholic drinks at 12:30pm!! We headed for the Bellagio, which many of you may remember as the casino that George Clooney, Brad Pitt and mates knocked off on the movie Ocean’s Eleven, hoping to catch a glimpse of the famous Bellagio dancing fountains. We caught them briefly as we crossed over the bridge from Bally’s to the Bellagio, and here’s a few photos from that!!

Knowing that the fountains do their thing every half-an-hour, it gave us a chance to check out the shops at the Bellagio, which are a veritable “who’s who” of shopping. I was led into Tiffany and Co, Chanel, Gucci and a lot of similarly expensive stores, with items that were well outside our price range (Sarah picked up a small Gucci handbag that she had taken a fancy to, only to put it back very quickly when she saw the price tag of $3150!!!). Sarah also snapped a couple of shots of the interior roof of the Bellagio’s shopping strip, which are pictured below.

We were then lucky enough to secure a spot in the shade to watch the Bellagio dancing fountains, a nice routine set against the song “All That Jazz” from the musical Chicago. Here are some photos from the routine, which was pretty cool!!

With the Bellagio in the bag, we walked back to the Venetian, via an outside shopping strip near the Flamingo where Sarah picked up a couple of dresses that can be worn in heaps of different ways, and took five before heading to the Food Court for a quick lunch, then to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum here at the Venetian!!

We picked up our tickets at a place called HalfTix, or something similar, where they sell half-price tickets to shows, restaurants, tours and the like. Instead of paying $25 a head plus tax, we coughed up $38 in total, which included HalfTix’s commission – a pretty good deal!! I really like Madame Tussauds, and their representation of celebrities, sports stars, Vegas personalities and American personalities. Here’s some of the celebrities we encountered in the museum – and yes, I’ll put beneath each of them who we are with to help you out!!

Here’s me with Julia Roberts…

“
Shaun and the “Governator”, Arnold Schwarzenger

Sarah with actor Matthew McConaughey

Sarah with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie

Doing my best “People’s Eyebrow” with The Rock

Throwing out gang signs with rapper Snoop Dogg

Sarah having a casual chat with Cameron Diaz

Sarah with George Clooney

Putting with Tiger Woods and Arnold Palmer watching on

An old mate, Michael Jordan

Shooting a two-pointer over Shaquille O’Neal – and scoring!!!

Sarah shaking her rump with Beyonce

Getting an autograph from a young bloke that you may know named Elvis!!

Both of us, one after the other, with Marilyn Monroe

Waiting for a deal at the poker table with actor Ben Affleck

Us with a much older Elvis!

Sarah with Vegas legends Siegfried and Roy, and their famous tiger!!

Shaping up to Muhammed Ali

Sarah with JFK and Jackie O

Sarah with Princess Di

Me walking on the moon with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin

"
The both of us with President Obama

Shooting the breeze with Honest Abe.

And folks, that basically brings you up-to-the-minute with what we are doing – we’ve spent the last couple of hours relaxing – whilst I’ve written this blog entry with ESPN on in the background (watching the score ticker for the Red Sox playing the Atlanta Braves, with the Red Sox winning 3-0 on the back of ace pitcher Josh Beckett pitching all nine innings whilst keeping the Braves scoreless), Sarah has been playing with her new dresses, trying the different styles of dress she can make with them!! We’re going out for dinner shortly (and might take in a quick swim at the Venetian’s awesome pool complex) and will likely have another look around Vegas under lights, but will update you on that tomorrow night!! Wow, that one took a while, but you got two days’ worth in one hit, with some pretty good scenery on the way through, so hope you enjoyed it!!! See you tomorrow night, again from Vegas

Evening folks, from our super-suite at the Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada!! We've made it here in one piece, despite a few traffic dramas on the way!!

But, sadly, it's a case of "more on that tomorrow". For the first time on the trip so far, I find myself so devoid of energy at the end of the day that I couldn't do the Grand Canyon the justice it deserves today. So I'm going to postpone things a bit - by about twelve hours or so, so that when you get up on Sunday morning in Australia, or as you settle into a Saturday lunch in the USA, you can do so reading about our adventures!! Apologies to anyone disappointed, but I am truly knackered. Don't worry, I'll tell you all about it in the morning - a morning where the alarm won't go off!!!!

Talk soon people!!

Good evening all, from a very tired two-some in Orlando, Florida after another day of Disney!! This one wasn’t quite as hectic, but the Florida sun made sure that the same tiredness factor is still there!!

First thing you’ll probably notice is that we’ve got this posted a lot earlier than what we did last night. Secondly, you’ll notice a distinct lack of photographic evidence of the day!! Both of these attributes can be put down to the fact that we didn’t delve as deeply into Disney as what we did yesterday.

We started the day by choosing Disney’s Hollywood Studios as our initial Disney destination for the day, as we’ve already done a lot of animal-related stuff in San Diego (but put it on the backburner as a possible “to do”, and after viewing the guide map given to us yesterday, Sarah dismissed Epcot as a possible destination. We also had another water park visit up our sleeves as well, so we packed the togs and towels in anticipation of maybe hitting up Typhoon Lagoon, the other Disney water park after visiting Blizzard Beach yesterday, later in the day.

So off we went on our free Mariott-funded Disney transportation, which, as luck would have it, wasn’t stopping at Hollywood Studios today. No matter though – we enjoyed the trip to the Transportation and Ticket Centre, with the new movie version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory playing on the bus to distract us. From there, we then boarded a “Disney Transportation” branded bus which took us directly to Hollywood Studios, and we were away for Disney Day 2!!

My initial thoughts were that crowds didn’t initially seem as big as they were yesterday, glancing at the humanity streaming through the gates. Hollywood Studios, though, is a much smaller park than Magic Kingdom, so it filled up just as quickly, especially when some High School Musical mini-parade and performance twaddle fired up just as we walked through the gates!!

Now Hollywood Studios wasn’t as impressive as the Magic Kingdom, in my eyes. Most of it was shopping-related, and ripped off a lot of other areas of the USA – it was based in Hollywood, there was a back-drop of a New York street and also a backdrop of one of San Francisco’s famous streets. One of the main attractions was “The American Idol Experience”, for which you can audition and perform in the show in front of the crowds which, as someone who considers themselves as a bit of a singer (despite words to the contrary from EVERYONE ELSE), I flirted with the idea of auditioning, then I realised that I didn’t fulfil the main criteria – being the “American Idol” experience, I’m not American!! We actually headed straight for a ride called “The Great Movie Ride”, which Sarah had read up about last night and liked the look of, only to find that there was already a 30-minute wait for this ride!! No matter, we’ll buzz over to one of the other rides that has a Fast Pass, get the pass, come back and line up for the Great Movie Ride, and by the time the ride has done, we’ll be right to go on the other ride!! Sounds like a good plan in theory. We all know that in theory, anything can happen though, and reality can be a brutal awakening! The first ride that we went to for which we could obtain a Fast Pass, Toy Story’s Midway Mania, had a 50 minute wait time, but the kicker was that, yes, you could get a Fast Pass, but it wouldn’t be any good until 3:45pm – knocking out your ability to get a Fast Pass for anything else at the same time!! With memories of the last Toy Story ride we went on – the Buzz Lightyear ride at Magic Kingdom which turned out to be a shooting game in which I allegedly was defeated by Sarah – flooding back, and also the fact this was billed as a “game-playing adventure”, we decided to have a wander around and look at most of Hollywood Studios, including a playground based on the movie “Honey I Shrunk The Kids” – you know it, where Rick Moranis plays a nutty scientist that can never get anything right, until he builds a shrinking machine that shrinks his kids to the size of crumbs and they get lost in their own backyard, which turns into a jungle for them!! We had a quick look in there at what a backyard would look like to someone miniscule, realised we were about 20 years too old for it, then proceeded to exit stage right!!

We wandered around Hollywood Studios for a bit, seeing that the Drew Carey audio show was closed, the Indiana Jones stunt show didn’t set up until later in the day, and that there wasn’t much else in that area of the park that didn’t involve damage to the wallet, so we decided to stick out the half-hour for the Great Movie Ride. We thought we were flying, being directed into the main building within about ten minutes, before a set of doors opened to see…a massive amount of people waiting in line!!! Yep, the line snaked around for another twenty-five minutes in front of a screen playing previews of “some of the greatest movies of all time” with the one recurring theme – yep, they were all produced by Disney!!!! Still, once we got to the ride – a boat ride floating through animatronically re-enacted scenes from mostly old movies – I think Alien was about the only recent one – it was quite enjoyable!!

It was approaching 11:30am already as we exited the Great Movie Ride, and Sarah was having some problems with her right eye, as it appeared some sunscreen had sweated into her eye when we were applying this morning, and her eye was all weepy. She nicked my sunglasses (which I thought of appealing when we exited the Great Movie Ride and we saw bright sunlight for the first time in about an hour) and soldiered on towards Hollywood Studios’ two major rides – the Tower of Terror and Aerosmith’s Rock N Roller Coaster. That was, until Sarah read that the Tower of Terror was a random 13-story high drop, straight down, and put the kibosh straight onto that idea. I didn’t volunteer to go it alone – not through any lack of testicular fortitude, but more through the fact that I didn’t want to leave Sarah waiting on her own with a sore eye for an hour. She also waved off the Rock N Roller Coaster, preferring instead to visit the First Aid area of Hollywood Studios, where the person in charge gave us a couple of vials of eye drops as the best possible solution, which I had to administer to Sarah. I reckon their would have been only seven drops in the vial, and only one made the mark. Two others rolled off the eye as Sarah closed her eye at the crucial moment, and I missed the eye completely with three – causing me to fling the vial containing the last drop against a wall in frustration. That one eye drop, though, did the trick – within ten minutes, she was as right as rain!!

After the eye-drop incident, we thought that we’d seen enough of Hollywood Studios, and with the day once again heating up to temperatures in the high 90’s (mid 30’s, Aussies), we decided that the time might be right to check out Typhoon Lagoon. Before we left Hollywood Studios though, there was one task that was still required – a task from which our respective mothers’ will benefit greatly!!

With the task completed and the back-pack strangely heavier, we exited Hollywood Studios. Looking at the Bus Transportation guide at the front of the park, every other Disney theme park and resort was listed (even Blizzard Beach got a run) apart from Typhoon Lagoon, so we thought that we’d have to hoof it to one of Disney’s Resorts and get the bus from there – that’s one of Disney’s key moves – all of the outriding stuff (that isn’t Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom or Hollywood Studios) can only be reached by buses from the various Resorts, encouraging you to spend even more money at Disney by staying at their accommodation. Unless you’re smart cookies like we are though, where you can simply jump on the first resort bus you see – to Disney’s Pop Culture Resort, jump off, and jump on a bus headed for Typhoon Lagoon!! Which is exactly what we did, with a couple of waiting periods in between, and the Typhoon Lagoon bus going via Downtown Disney, which Disney designed and furnished with bars, nightclubs, a marketplace, a Cirque Du Soleil and a Planet Hollywood when they realised that resort guests wanting to escape the sounds of “it’s a small world after all” were spending money outside of Disney. “That can’t happen” said Disney’s big-wigs, and designed a place where you could let your hair down and seemingly escape Disney, but without escaping Disney!!

We entered Typhoon Lagoon at about 1:00pm, and stayed for three hours – probably my three most enjoyable hours of the last couple of days. Again, I flaunted my naked upper-body (although looking at some of the shades of pink I’m sporting at the moment, I wonder if that was a good idea) around the park, and had a ball doing it. From the “Castaway Creek”, where you could float around in an inner tube circling the park to your heart’s content, to the Surf Pool that generated decent six-foot waves that had me remembering family holidays to Queensland as a mere slip of a lad, Typhoon Lagoon was a very relaxing experience. I even coaxed Sarah into coming on a couple of rides with me!! We floated around Castaway Creek a couple of times, which was very relaxing, and my darling even accompanied me on the “Gangplank Falls” ride, where we both fitted into a rubber boat and went down a “white water rafting” course, which was tame enough to please Sarah!! She did baulk at the Crush “N” Gusher water coaster though, although there was a pool where you could sit back and watch the riders do their thing (and the line was moving pretty rapidly), so I left Sarah in the pool and climbed the stairs to coast away!!! Seeing stairs initially gave me flashbacks to Blizzard Beach’s huge waterslide that you may remember I very nearly lost control of my bodily functions yesterday (wow, today’s blog has turned out a touch more scatalogical than I had anticipated – hope it passes the Nanna Test OK!!), but I had nothing to fear, once I grabbed my inner tube, set it on the small conveyor used to launch you into the ride and stretched my slender frame onto the inner tube, it was a piece of cake. Sure, there were some dark bits, some fast bits and some bits where you drop rather dramatically, but Cool Hand Luke here showed no emotion until the end of the ride, where both index fingers were raised above the head, knowing that the Disney photographers were poised at the shutter. I haven’t seen the photo yet, but I’ve got an access code to look at it on the web, and I’ll be betting it looks pretty tough!! We had the camera in our backpack securely locked away at Typhoon Lagoon, which is why there are no pictures – and there’s that old chestnut about people probably not being too impressed with the lack of ripples in my rippling physique!!

Our relaxing afternoon at Typhoon Lagoon came to an end about 4pm, when we decided that we should enjoy the spoils of the Courtyard Marriott for a bit before going out for dinner then planning the next part of our road trip – three decent-sized days of driving to get to the Grand Canyon. We were going to wait for a bus to take us from Typhoon Lagoon to Disney’s Polynesian Resort, get the Monorail back to the Transportation and Ticketing Centre and then wait for our Marriott bus from there, but given that we weren’t likely to make it onto the Marriott bus until 5:30pm at the earliest, we instead jumped in a taxi and were back at the Marriott in fifteen minutes!!

We had spied a Golden Corral restaurant on our travels yesterday, and saw it again today, seemingly located just walking distance from our hotel room. In checking Golden Corral out on the internet, we found it was a buffet restaurant, and the fresh steamed vegetables listed on the buffet had us both drooling. We put on some decent clothes and walked back out onto Vineland Avenue and around to the Golden Corral, only to find that we’d gone the long way – had we come out of the front doors of the hotel and turned left instead of right, it was almost right around the flipping corner!! By this time, we were both tired, hungry and sick of waiting in lines, so imagine the shock when we get to the Golden Corral, and not only is there a line, it’s out the bloody door!! This wasn’t on, so we ventured over to the Bohemia Blaze restaurant opposite, which at least didn’t have lines waiting out the door. It looked pretty crowded, but we thought it must have been for people having drinks. When we requested a table for two and was told that “the wait is half an hour or less”, we spun on our heels as the electronic thingy the waitress was trying to hand us (which I presume would flash and play noises when our table was ready) crashed to the ground, and we headed back out the front door, cursing the fact that even the eateries in Orlando have huge lines. With our dreams of veggies dashed (thanks to not having the energy to get in the car and drive somewhere should the same thing happen to repeat itself), we skulked back to the Pizza Hut inside the Marriott, which thankfully was covered under our accommodation package, and picked up a ham and pineapple pizza that the pizza maker obviously stood a fair way away from when putting the toppings on!!

After our gourmet dinner, we decided that we’d better sample the Courtyard Marriott’s aquatic attractions, and headed for a nice, relaxing spa, which was fantastic, until the water heated up considerably and sweat started pouring down our cheeks. All that did was give us a chance to jump in the adjacent pool though, which started indoors and flowed outside, with the centrepiece being a fountain-type arrangement that was quite therapeutic should you be in the path of the fountains – which saved me having to perform a back massage later tonight!!

And so, that brings our Disney adventure to a close. My recommendation?? I reckon I would have enjoyed it more 15 years ago, as it seems that Disney is manufactured for the younger audience. Still, there were enough elements to keep me happy – the water parks were a great hit and it was good to see Magic Kingdom to say that I’ve been there and done that, and have a photo with Mickey Mouse to prove it!! I don’t know if I’d do Disney again, but I’m sure glad that I have done it once.

So tomorrow, we hit the road again, headed back west this time, with our destination to be a day at the Grand Canyon this Friday 19th June. Sarah brought up the fact today that we only have ten days left before we fly back to Melbourne, which was a bit of a downer, given the fun we are having!! We’ll update you tomorrow night from somewhere in America’s deep South, likely near the Alabama/Tennessee border, in Elvis country!! Until then, be good, y’all!!!!!