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Colleen & Tom's Explorations
Well, Sheraton let us down today! We have a 7.30am coach pickup today so we thought we'd have room service breakfast, and put the order on the door at 9pm. When it hadn't arrived by 6.30am Tom looked out the door and the order was still hanging on the handle! So we had to go downstairs for breakfast in their coffee shop - can't take my meds without food and my knees are going to need them today! We mentioned it to reception as we walked past but told them we didn't have time to sort it now. So I had 2 pieces of toast, coffee and juice, Tom had the same but with cereal as well and it came to forty something dollars! What a rip-off. We waited out the back of the hotel for the coach with a couple of Melbournian boys. They'd just come in from Washington and had done the Smithsonians - they loved them and were excited about the space centre for today - Tom enjoyed talking to them. So, the coach took about an hour picking up people from all the different hotels and then we headed out to Cape Canaveral. The coach driver gave us maps and talked to us all along the way about the best way to cover all the good bits at the visitor centre. He was really helpful and confirmed our plans of doing the bus tour first. The bus tour took us over to the restricted area on a tour of the launch pads, the mobile launch pads and the Vehicle Assembly Building. It's an amazing amount of space they have, so much land and it's a national park type of area. There were alligators in the waterways along each side of the road. The mobile launch pad has huge caterpillar treads to get around on and it runs along these huge tracks filled with river pebbles. River pebbles are smooth and will move more easily under the weight of the load and less likely to cause damage to it. These pebble tracks each the width of a three lane highway and go all over the base. The base is sending off a rocket on Sunday so they are preparing for that. They are also gearing up for a new rocket program (modifying launch pads) to get man to Mars, and to be able to capture asteroids on collision course with Earth. We didn't get to hop off the bus at any of these places, we just toured around the outside and the informative bus driver told us about everything. We also saw the road that takes you to the space shuttle's landing strip. In between shuttle uses they hire it out to many other aero-space companies. When we returned to the visitor centre it was lunchtime!! There was a large cafe called Orbit Cafe and we had Little Caesars pizza slices! We have been seeing ads for Little Caesars on every visit to the US over the last 26 years and this was the first time we ate it! It was lovely. It was a deep pan pepperoni pizza slice (quite large) and the crust had the texture of cake, but savoury. It was very yummy! After that I stayed put while Tom buzzed around seeing everything that interested him. I was particularly interested in the launch pads, and I'd seen the Saturn rocket that takes the spaceships up to space, so I was happy. The big orange fuel tank that takes them up into space holds over 500,000 gallons of fuel. It takes 3 hours to fill, and just 8 minutes to empty! When Tom had finished going through all the other exhibition halls he came back and we went to the IMAX theatre and watched a 40 minute movie in 3D - ''twas great. Then he just had time to check out the heroes and legends hall and it was 5.15 - time to board the bus! The flags were all at half mast today because it was John Glen's funeral (the astronaut). Our trip back took ages - it was Friday night and Donald Trump was in town (of course he was), doing his "thank you tour". We freshened up in our room and ventured downstairs for a word to reception about breakfast. They were most apologetic and invited us to have tomorrow's breakfast on the house. I should think so too. We then made our way across the road to Red Lobster - very much like Outback Steakhouse but with seafood. They even have fresh lobsters in a tank at the front door. I had lobster bisque as a starter, Tom had potato soup. I then had a plate with lobster, prawns (both garlic and skewered), crab cake with scampi sauce, Brussels sprouts and mashed potato. ''Twas wonderful. Tom had Cajun salmon! We were too full for dessert. I drank some lovely NZ Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough (Cupcake) and Tom drank Belgian beer. A great ending to a big day!
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