Alli's Adventure: Orlando

Showing posts with label Orlando. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Orlando - Part II

Discovery Cove Day! (AKA, Valentine's Day - Carmen and Alli Style)

Nothing says Valentine's like cake and Bud Light

I'll start by saying I had my "excited" face on the ENTIRE day. This park was amazing. Carmen's family met up with us in the morning and Carmen gave us a "backstage" tour of Discovery Cove. She showed us the kitchen where they prepare meals and snacks for all 40 dolphins for the entire day.... a serious endeavor. We got to meet one of the dolphins and take a tour of the aviary. Carmen and grabbed our gear for the rest of the day and went in to the park. Discovery Cove is AMAZING! Everything is included - like our beverages and snacks and my delicious lobster sandwich lunch. We lucked out for weather too. It looked overcast and rain was in the forecast, but when we got out and about the sun was shining and it was in the low 80's. It was the perfect break from dreary Nashville this time of year. I was in awe the whole time... like how many times does one get to pet a baby ant eater?

We put on our wetsuits just in time for feeding in the ray pool. The rays were huge... way bigger than the ones at the North Carolina aquarium. I got a handful of shrimp and the rays came up and sucked them out of my hand. hehe. I'm still trying to figure out my video camera, so still pictures will have to do for now...check out the pic Carmen got of a ray coming in for the kill!

The park recently got a Nurse Shark someone had been keeping as a pet and it had outgrown their home tanks. I got to pet the dermal denticles (see, I didn't forget everything I learned in NC) and give it a piece of fish. The park doesn't have the sharks swimming around out in the snorkel reef with the visitors, but the reef has glass walls that you can snorkel right up to and see the sharks swimming around. Pretty sweet.

Of course the day wouldn't be complete without meeting Carmen's favorite dolphin Capricorn! I'm so jealous that Carmen gets to work in this paradise everyday. It was hard to pick out just a couple dolphin pictures to post because in every one of the photos I have this ridiculously huge grin on my face. It was SUCH a cool treat.

A couple pictures... me and Carmen in our *hot* wetsuits getting ready for sunshiny fun... and a couple of parrots we got to check out in the aviary. The lazy river in the park actually flows through the aviary so you can get out in the jungle with the birds and get back in to resume the float.

The end of the day we were goofing around and trying out our waterproof cameras. I miss Orlando!

Orlando Adventure - Part III

The Epcot Challenge: To make it around the world and stop at each of the eleven countries to get a picture with "locals" in "native garb" from every nationality by the end of the day. We got started a little late on the 15th, and didn't really get into our tour until a little afternoon... so we had LOTS to accomplish!

STOP 1: CANADA!

It took a little deliberation, but we finally decided to start our tour in Carmen's homeland - Canada. And at our first stop we were informed that the "correct" way to tour the world was to start in Mexico - oops. So there we have our lumberjacks and then the pictures of us in our native Canadian head wear :) The picture is goofy, but we were cracking each other up so much "being Canadian" that people asked if they could take their picture with us because they thought we were part of the attraction.

STOP 2: UNITED KINGDOM!

Ok, then off to the UK. We got our employee of the country to pretend he was a rugby player. He told us that in order to be good at rugby, you have to possess some anger. Yikes. While we didn't dress up in authentic English costume, we did eat some delicious fish and chips. Carmen asked if the fish was from the UK... no it turns out, but they fly the batter in special just for Epcot. It's pretty much the real deal.

STOP 3: FRANCE!

The French natives didn't think we were so funny. I think because we didn't want to see their art show. But the city of lights (that's Paris, right?) treated us well and after our brief stop.... we were on our way.

STOP 4: MOROCCO!

Yep, Morocco... we kissed a genie and the local Moroccans LOVED Carmen. They got us dressed up like belly dancers and when we were leaving, they wanted to be facebook friends. Haha. Carmen keeps things lively... it's never boring when she's around.

STOP 5: JAPAN!

Our friend in Japan tied our kimonos with some serious precision. He took about five minutes to tie each of us up before our picture. Japan was always a favorite of Granny and me, so it was pretty cool to be there and think about fun adventures I've been on with Gran.

STOP 6: USA!

The American Adventure had by far, the least exciting local gentleman. And we didn't see any powdered wigs. Oh well. On to...

STOP 7: ITALY!

Carmen's friend Jackie caught up with us. She's so much fun and she remembered some Italian to speak with our new friends. We're well over halfway around the world. Jackie's friend Zucker works for Disney as an animation artist and he got us our tickets for the day. He was such a cool guy, when we met up with him he asked us our favorite Disney characters and sketched them for us. The next day Jackie delivered my picture of Sleeping Beauty! How sweet! A Disney Princess!

STOP 8: GERMANY!

Hmmmm.... Germany got a little weird. We met two other crews on similar world tours! A couple of guys from Argentina taught us some toasts and tried to get us to go out with them later (unfortunately we fell asleep pretty much as soon as we got home)

STOP 9: CHINA!

China! Our stop here was brief because we were on a mission to finish our tour and make it back to China for dinner!

STOP 10: NORWAY!

Norway was the one ride we went on the ENTIRE day. We got a kick out of the viking helmets, but I felt a little jilted that the "Norway" beer was Carlsberg. Seriously? I've been listening to Collapse by Jared Diamond and I've decided to become a viking.