After a marathon coach ride yesterday we faced our first full day in Orlando, home of the ginormous theme park. Today most of us chose to take advatage of the Contiki transport offer to visie Universal Studiosand its attendant theme park, Islands of Adventure. In the ticket queue I started chatting to Desmerelda, a woman on the tour to whom I hadn't really spoken to much. We had similar plans for the day and so ended up spending a very pleasant day together roaming around the parks. (Apart from the time she dragged me onto the Fairy Princess unicorn roller coaster...)

I've never considered myself a big theme-park perso, sot I enjoyed the day much mor than I expected. The larger roller coasters were truly exhilarating and offered very smooth rides. Because it's 'winter' in Orlando the crowds were almost nonexistent so we rarely had to wait in line. Despite the unavoidable tackiness of any theme park, the Universal parks offered a quality and polish that really made the experienc enjoyable.

Tonight was the toga party...

Yes, you read that correctly. We all Roman-ed up for a night of lunacy and lots of alcohol (even by Contiki standards). The high point of the night was the epic beer-pong match between our tour manager Drew and Bob the crazy bus driver. Drew mate, sorry, but you're all talk...

I'm so glad I came on this tour. One's life is just not complete without beer-pong ;-)