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Long time, no blog! Last time I wrote, we were still in Tampa at Ashleigh's condo. Tampa was a total chill-out; basically an amazing two week break of doing pretty much nothing, which was a great start to the vacation. I guess we spent most of the time just being in the sun, walking around, and relaxing really. We went to the movies a couple more times and saw 21 and Iron Man, both which were great (in particular Iron Man which really is awesome.) We had lunch at Hooters and went on a few walks. Nothing else really! It was great just to get away from working shifts and never sleeping. Oh, and I got another tattoo! It's a really cute lightning bolt down by my heel / ankle. As it was healing, I thought it was going to be completely screwed up; it went all white and scabby and faded (it was bright blue orignally) but it's actually healed perfectly. It's only the size of a ten pence coin, but there's a tiny patch about a milimetre wide (TINY) where the blue didn't take, so I'll get that fixed next time I get a tattoo, or if I ever get my wrist coloured in (which I'm seriously contemplating) so no biggie. I love it!
We left Tampa on the 21st and drove to Orlando. Whilst driving, I experienced the craziest coffee experience I've ever had, and I drink a lot of it. We called at Starbucks on the outskirts of Tampa, and I ordered a latte. All of a sudden, the girl behind the counter started screaming. Then she goes, "Oh my God, say something else!" to which I reply, "And the blueberry coffee cake please..." Then she screams again and calls the other girl over, and goes, "Oh my God listen to his accent! It's so cute!" Then Chloe walks over and orders her drink, and the girls scream, "Oh my God there's two of them! Here guys, these drinks are on us." I'm not even joking. We got our coffee for free because we're British. Damn, I love America.
Since getting to Orlando, we've been much more active. We were starting to feel so sluggish from living off pizza and never moving, but in Orlando our hotel is on International Drive, directly opposite Wet & Wild, so we walk up and down the street all day long. It has everything we need! We've befriended the staff at IHOP because we literally eat there every day. Carmen, Latoyah, the whole gang haha. Today we went in for lunch, and the server started clapping as she walked up to our table, and knew what drinks we were going to order. I live in Epworth my whole life, then spend a week in Orlando and I'm classed as a regular. It's crazy, but I love it.
As I'm nocturnal anyway, our sleep pattern has been completely out of whack; it got the point where if we didn't pull an all nighter and then stay up all day too, we would never get up in time to go to the parks and get the 9am bus, so the other day we pulled an all nighter and then went to a fairground down the street. It's called Fun Spot, and they have all these crazy go kart tracks and a ferris wheel and water games. It was such a fun day, and if we weren't doing something so mad and active, we would have fallen asleep. It was a hilarious day of racing and riding, and it set us right for the next day when we went to Islands of Adventure.
Now that really was hysterical. I'd forgotten how fun, and how terrifying, roller coasters are. It's literally been years since I've been on one! First on the agenda was The Hulk, which was just insane. It shot off half way through the tunnel, so I wasn't expecting it and completely lost my breath! It was hilarious and fun and scary, but somewhat reminiscent of The Corkscrew at Alton Towers. I think next time I ride it I'll wear a neckbrace and ear muffs just for safety purposes. If you've ever been on The Corkscrew, you'll know what I mean.My favourite ride was definitely Duelling Dragons. We went on the red one, which is the fire dragon, and it was so smooth and easy and fun. Exhilarating without getting a bruised face, which is always a bonus. I'm looking at you, Hulk. We also did Doctor Doom (the one that shoots you up in the air and then drops you) twice, as well as the River Rapids, Spiderman (which is AMAZING) and all the other rides in between. It was an awesome day, despite getting severely burned on my forehead, and definitely worth the money.We went to Universal Studios the next day as we had a three day ticket, and although it has a completely different vibe to Islands, it was still really fun. We went on The Simpsons ride, which is the brand new one, and although we queued for about forty grillion years, it was a really great ride. It's kind of like this big simulator thing, which was really fun and different to anything else we'd been on. Oh and we went on Return of The Mummy, another one I'd never been on before, which was AWESOME! I wasn't expecting it to be so fast and fun, but it was so much more than I expected! There's loads of fire that comes out of the walls, and you go backwards and zoom up and down and beetles crawl out and- it was just amazing. We spent the whole morning in Universal, doing Twister and Jaws in between, and then back to Islands of Adventure for the afternoon, re-doing Doctor Doom and the rapids, and getting another roller coaster injection. We decided to end our Universal experience after the two days; we were so exhausted, and we already did everything in both parks (barring Men in Black as it was broken, and Ripsaw Falls due to the ninety minute waiting line.)
Today (the third day) was a free day because we paid for two, so we thought we'd spend it catching up on sleep and just chilling out. We went down the road to a different go kart track (I'm actually amazing at go karting by the way, it's quite the hidden talent) and sat out at Starbucks chatting.
The other day we were walking down past Starbucks, and we saw this guy that we've been seeing quite a lot. He always has his bicycle propped up against a bench, and there are five parrots sat on it. I'm talking real parrots here, alive and flapping. Clo asked him if she could take a photo of them, and before we know it we've been stood next to each other, covered in birds (on our shoulders, arms and hands) and the guy is taking a polaroid of us and charging us $10! Haha! It was hilarious though, and he was really nice; he took a load of photos of us on Clo's camera too, so for $5 each to be covered in birds and get some photos for the album wasn't bad at all. A few minutes later though, the sky turned black. And I mean pitch black. This giant Twister-esque Day After Tomorrow Cloverfield disaster cloud swept the street in SECONDS, and everybody started to run. We were like, what the hell? Next minute the sky broke, lightning started striking, the thunder was deafing, and we were the ONLY people on International Drive, the most famous street in Orlando. It was so surreal! We managed to run into a gift shop, much to the amusement of all the people who had already made it in there and were huddled in the door way. We got some photos of the sky though, and of us post-down pour. It was hilarious.
I think that's all for now folks! We've spent the evenings eating at Subway, sitting off in the local book store reading magazines for free and drinking coffee, and watching Gossip Girl on the laptop. Just basically chilling out and preparing for the manic time that will be New York on Monday!
Stay safe and be good everyone.
XO Olly
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