A Little Big Idea to go to the US

After a great Carribean cruise, coming back into Miami Port was a bit sad. Luckily, we had an alligator airboat tour to cheer us up. We got a bus from the port to the Everglades National Park and then we hopped on to a small airboat and went off into the swampy alligator country. I saw three alligators, a couple of turtles and a wide variety of birds. I enjoyed going really fast on the airboat up the grassy river and around the bends. After the airboat ride we sat down and watched a presentation on snakes, birds, crocodiles and alligtors. At the end I held the four year old alligator. Back on the bus and heading towards the Miami airport, I am looking forward to coming home and seeing everyone. See you soon!!

Some more highlights and enjoyable parts of our Bahamas cruise: 1) The staff on the ship - 900 in total, in addition to the 2,700 passengers. They are all so lovely and go out of their way to make you feel special. We became good buddies with our room attendant, Oswald who is from Guyana. He said he'd clean our room twice a day for us and each morning we told him our room was fine and he didn't need to, but he'd sneak in and do it anyway. Every evening we'd come into the room to find the lamps on and a towel creature made on our bed. We challenged him to a kangaroo but he said he needed more time to study it. We sat in the hallway with him one morning and got him to teach us how to make the swan, so you're in for a treat if you ever come and stay at Bundeela St! The staff work on 7 month contracts and don't get a single day off in that time, it's back to back cruises. They then get 2 months off to go back home to their families and hopefully pick up

Oh yes we are.....on a cruise ship in the Caribbean, it still sounds surreal typing it! We're on board the Enchantment of the Seas and have so far travelled from Miami, to the capital of the Bahamas, Nassau and then on to Coco Cay, a private island owned by the Royal Caribbean cruise company. Dylan crashed on the first day, which was actually the first day on the trip that we got to sit down and have breakfast. Our days have been super early mornings and breakfast on the go so far. This picture was taken at 10:30am! Dylan and I are going to give you a few highlights and observations so far: 1) The ship (Phoebe) - Our ship is massive and has 11 floors and 2,700 passengers (plus hundreds of crew) on board. There are multiple pools, a rock climbing wall, a jogging track, a trampoline, 4 dining areas, about 10 bars, a shopping precinct, an art gallery, a casino, a theatre and so much more. It really is a massive industry this cruising business - there were 5 cruise ships docke

Epcot, we found out, stands for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow and was based on Walt Disney’s idea for a future full of innovation and then combined with the idea of a World Fair. Kind of strange combination but it was definitely a fun and interesting place to visit. We like it a lot as it was Disney without being too ‘Disney’ – we didn’t want to wait in line for hours to meet Elsa or Cinderella but wanted to be entertained and learn something. Epcot felt more like a festival than Disneyland (well that’s what Mum said anyway). We were at Epcot from 10am to 10pm, there was so much to do. The first thing we did was watch a movie about sustainability in living and city design (presented by Timon and Pumbaa of course) followed by a boat journey showing the work Epcot is doing in developing ways of growing food sustainably. Mum loved their hanging cucumber and tomato tree setup. The lines were long but always moving. We had to wait the longest for one of the highli

We made another trip to the Amway Centre, where magically they had transformed the ice hockey rink into a basket ball court...how is that even possible....the guy we spoke to said they lay the court on top of the ice! We watched the Orlando Magic play the Indiana Pacers and loved it even more than the ice hockey - definitely a trip highlight so far. My favourite player is Aaron Gordon - number 00 - because I bought a singlet with his name on it and he played well. The atmosphere was fun but not as distracting as the ice hockey - the sport was definitely the focus, not just the loud music. Here's some footage of the game, unfortunately the Orlando Magic was beaten :( They still had plenty of fun stuff like a drone blimp that flew around the stadium dropping teddy bears, entertainment every time out and break including t-shirt guns, cheerleaders and a guns vs hoses (police vs firefighters) game. Mascots are big over here - their mascot is a weird looking rainbow dragon

Well it's been a fairly ordinary start to our American food experience. To be fair, we've been at touristy places so we can't expect too much.....here's some thoughts though: 1. The first hamburger: on the ordering board was a lovely picture of a hamburger with lettuce, tomato, cheese and sauce. On my tray was two pieces of weird textured bread and a crispy brown patty. My verdict: gross 2. Coffee; yuk and with this weird creamer stuff. What will mum do without good coffee? 3. Bread: the bread seems far removed from our idea of bread. No sourdough or wholemeal here, the sandwiches and rolls we've tried are a white, spongy sugary concoction. A bit like some sort of cake. ****Update: we have just had a late dinner at the hotel restaurant and were served two fresh, warm, crusty real-bread bread rolls. We devoured them and our faith in doughy carbs has been restored! 4. Hot dog. Bread was a yellow cake this time and the Frankfurt looked like a dog's tail. Th

We slept in this morning, accidentally, as the jet lag and late nights caught up with us. We missed our first bus to Walt Disney World so adjusted our plans. The next bus took us to Magic Kingdom (not on our itinerary and the ridiculously long queues provided us with further convincing) and we managed to make our way down to Blizzard Beach, one of the Disney Water parks. We had a relaxing day there and went on as many rides as we felt like. My favourite was the Double Dipper - sitting in a blown up donut, shot out of a tunnel, around a bend and down two huge drops. Mum's favourite was the giant tobaggon racing slide lying on foam mats (I think probably because she beat me in every race!) It was a strange mix of a snow themed water park with cool Caribbean music playing all day and palm trees. But it was super fun and very chilled out.  And the video below shows the last glimpses of Dylan's sunglasses which ended up at the bottom of an 8 foot pool. The lifeguards wou

The music was blaring, the crowd was cheering and dancing, and the players were punching.....welcome to ice hockey! It was a completely new experience to be at an ice hockey game, unlike anything we've seen in Australia. We almost had to block our ears the music was so loud. There were crowd games and contests between the three sessions of play and the crowd cheered loudest when the players fought each other. The music even encouraged them, playing the Rocky theme every time the fists came out. Orlando Solar Bears were victorious over the Florida Everblades 4-3.

Well not a major one, no astronaut's lives on the line, but our planned meeting with an astronaut didn't eventuate. Unfortunately my tour and special experiences somehow got lost in space. But we were at the Kennedy Space Centre on a free trip and we were still happy to make the most of it doing our own thing. A bus tour around the launchpads was informative and I learnt a lot about how space craft are built and take off..Check out the big machine on tracks they use for transporting the rockets to the launchpad. Seeing the spaceships was great: old rockets, one of the Apollos, and space shuttle Atlantis was awesome. It takes a lot of hard work and good ideas to get people into space. The best bit was going on a simulation of a space shuttle takeoff. They built it up to be really scary but I think it wasn't any near as rough as taking off on a real one. Mum thought it was probably the safest ride in the world because it was built by NASA engineers. Oh - and we saw