Entries Tagged 'Travel' ↓

Well, I’ve done a lot better with the blog this year than I did last year but I haven’t quite finished the trip and I’ve been home over a week and half. I’m going to see if I can at least get some thoughts down to commemorate the last few days of the trip as it was fun. (Edit: That’s as far as I got, I’m trying again now as my memory has been jogged doing some of the finances for the trip!)

I left Fort Lauderdale on the Wednesday morning. It always seems like a mammoth effort to get packed and out of my accommodation on time, no matter how much I’ve done the night before. Admittedly, when I have a 6am flight it is harder, but this morning I didn’t have to be out until 11am. Admittedly I had time to kill – Universal check in isn’t until 4pm and it’s only about a 3.5 hour drive so I wasn’t keen to leave any earlier than 11. But I said farewell to one of my favourite vacationing spots and headed up to Orlando. There’s nothing really to note about the drive, but as I already mentioned the car wasn’t as nice and I did miss adaptive cruise control. After two stops at Starbuck’s to kill time I made it to Universal pretty close to 4pm. I did all the check-in, parking etc. The room was nice, but once again I forgot to take photos. I did take the view from my room – you can just see the tip of Volcano Bay’s mountain.

After sorting out parking, shifting stuff from my car and everything I decided I may as well head off to the parks. The parks were open til 8pm (Universal Studios) and 9pm (Islands of Adventure) so I thought I’d head over for a couple of hours and at least get an idea of how things worked so I could make the most of my time over the next few days. I had a 4 day ticket (because the bundle with that was cheaper than 3 days), so I thought I may as well make use of it. Getting to the parks was very easy, there are buses from right outside my resort (indeed, all of the universal resorts) that take you to the city walk entry. From there you have to go through metal detectors and then walk and take travelators to the park entry.

Edit: so it’s a few months later. I’m once again sitting in the Melbourne Business Lounge, but this time It’s because I’m about to head home from one of my weekend FPS work trips. I never did finish the blog. It won’t be as detailed as I like, but I’m keen to get a few thoughts down so I’ll see if I can manage at least a brief account of my last few days. So after re-reading where I’m up to, let’s see what I can remember.

I stopped for the obligatory photo you can see above, before heading into Universal Studios. I had spend some of the proceeding time researching day plans for each of the parks. My tentative schedule at this point (mostly based on weather) was Universal Studios, Volcano Bay, Islands of Adventure. I also though that would work well as Volcano Bay should be a quieter day so would be a good in between day. That’s not how it turned out, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself! So I thought I would take the last few hours of this day to familiarise myself with one of the parks and maybe stop in to any rides that had short queues.

A short excursus: Much like Disney, universal rides have an app that shows wait time and also wait times above each ride, which is super helpful. Unlike Disney almost every Universal ride has a single rider line (Disney only has one or two rides that do). I rate them highly! They are so much quicker than the standard queue. I’m biased because I was travelling by myself, but even if I wasn’t I’m pretty sure I would make use of them. For most rides it’s not super important to me to sit next to my friend (unlike many teenage girls I saw!) I’m very happy t experience the ride and then chat to my friend after the fact.

This post is getting long so I think I’ll break it up and start a new one with my time in the park.

I think this post is going to be a pretty short one – there’s not a lot for me to tell you. The point of my time in Florida was to relax and that’s what I did mostly. I finally got Chick-fil-A (twice) as much as I enjoy it I didn’t want to over do it. I made sure to pick it up myself once so it was fresh. Here’s what the chips look like – an image is probably better as I don’t seem to explain it well. They are yummy though.

In addition to spending time round the house, lying by the pool and swimming, I tried for a beachy sunset on Monday (even though I’m really on the wrong side of the coast). I also went to the beach on Tuesday, the water is so warm in Florida. It’s also hilarious because people talk about how vicious the Florida sun in as how you burn in seconds. The highest UV while I was there was an 8. I think they get 9 or 10 on a very rare day. Which is really nothing compared to Australian sun in the summer. It means I can spend more time outside and be less likely to get burnt, especially if I use sunscreen well. Spray sunscreen is all the rage over there and I’m a fan of the Bannan Boat dry tanning oil SPF 8 & SPF 15 (I also accidentally picked up and SPF 4) so I’ve got a few of those to last for when it’s summer again in Perth! I mentioned I was worried about the weather and there was some cloudy parts of the day. But in typical Florida fashion you could almost guarantee at least some parts of the day would be bright and sunny. It’s safe to say you can definitely see my watch tan and I managed to pretty much avoid getting burnt which is the aim. Unlike some people I don’t subscribe to the idea of getting burnt to help tan. Tanning is not great for you, but there are benefits to vitamin D. But sunburn is definitely bad for you and I’d prefer not to get skin cancer!

That’s pretty much it for Florida. It was relaxing and I didn’t do a lot, which was pretty much the aim. I had one more night in Fort Lauderdale, but I’ll do all of tomorrow in a new post.

(Edit) The pitfalls of doing this after the fact is you forget some things. I may have mentioned this before but it turns out, I unfortunately left my Air Pods in the hotel in Louisville. Despite my attempts to contact them it looks like I’m not getting them back. To make matters worse, when I was cleaning the pool on my second day (I think), one of my pair of backup bluetooth earphones jumped out of me ear and into the pool. I thought it was dead, though it did come back eventually. However, I then lost it on the plane from LA – Melbourne! However, long and short was I needed new earphones. It turns out the US is slightly cheaper than Australia so I used trust amazon to get a new pair of Air Pod Pros delivered to a nearby amazon locker. They weren’t cheap, but at least I now have the new model with the speaker that plays a sound fi I can’t find them!

…and probably my favourite state. Well, I’m back in Australia. Currently, I’m sitting in the Melbourne Business Lounge and I’m on the my third coffee of the morning! I guess it’s good to be home, but I’m kind of sad that the trip is over. I had a great time and I learned a bit about how some things work and how I would do it if I did this trip again. I’ll point these out as I go and maybe do an overall impressions when I’m done, but let’s continue with this chapter of the story.

(So picking up on Saturday) It’s 4.30 in the morning, I’ve had about 4 hours sleep which is not enough! Why do I keep booking these early flights, oh right, they’re the cheap ones. Anyway I’m off the Florida, though the weather forecast has me a little worried. There’s a lot of cloudy days and rainy ones when I’m at Universal… but we’ll see what happens. I’ve got two pretty short flights which is nice. When you end up in Tenessee, Florida isn’t too far away. Nashville airport was nothing exciting, it didn’t take too long to get through and it had an Admirals club, so I got coffee and yogurt. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned, but unlike Australia, most intra-US flights don’t serve food, just a beverage, so pre-flight lounge access is really good as you actually get food!

There were short, uneventful flights including the stop in Charlotte. As the first flight was fast it was a few hours transit, but as I was in the Admirals club it was fine. It meant I got to have some lunch too! I landed in Fort Lauderdale and it’s certainly a smaller airport. You’ve got to take a bus to get to the rental car centre, but it’s no big deal. I got my car, but I was much less enamoured with this one. It was a Chevrolet, but it seemed to be a more base model. No sensors, adaptive cruise control or any of the new fruit. It was fine for what I needed, but I wouldn’t have been happy if it was my first car with all the driving I did in that.

I must admit, I did fine some irony in the fact that the car I picked up in Chicago was licensed in Florida and the car I picked up in Florida was licensed in Texas. (I know it would have been funnier if that was Chicago, but still.) I did really like the fact that I flew into Fort Lauderdale though, especially since I was tired, not having to drive 3 hours from Orlando was very nice.

I went with my usual plan of heading off to Starbucks to kill time as check in wasn’t til 4pm. However at the Starbucks I found I couldn’t see where I was supposed to park – it all seemed to be reserved for other shops. After a bit I decided if I went to Aldi and did shopping it would probably almost be 4. So that’s what I did, went and bought some food (this Aldi was pretty small and a bit disappointing, but If found everything I needed) and then went to my accommodation. It’s the same place I stayed in last year and I found it really relaxing so wanted to do it again. It’s a nice place, too small for me to live in full time, but it’s prefect for a holiday, it’s kind of like a one bedroom studio. It has everything I need including a pool to have a nice relaxing place to myself. I was going to direct you to last years blog post to see photos of where I stayed, but turns out I didn’t get that far last year, so hear you go

I also love the fact that it has a pool – I forgot to take a photo of it this year so I delved back into last years photos. The first two are from last year, the third is this year, showing that my friend, one of the local fauna is still going strong!

I don’t think I did much else that day. I probably laid by the pool briefly and went for a quick swim then cooked some dinner and probably went to bed pretty early – I think I was tired!