Holiday Update Post – the rest!

(The last of a chain of long holiday posts!)

Day 12 – 13
On the Friday, the day after we went to Universal, Leon was not very well. this day had been allotted as the water park day. I didn’t want to leave Leon on his own, so I stayed at the villa with him. I have to admit I was pretty grumpy about it at first. However, I soon realised that Leon really was sick, so I left him in bed and took my knitting and a puzzle book and sat by the pool. It was actually a pleasant way to spend a day, just lounging around, bottle of water by my side, knitting in hand. Of course there are no pictures to prove this because I took most of the photos for the holiday and I didn’t think of putting the timer on! The cold I’d been fending off since Clearwater was making my eyes runny too, which didn’t help. However, I got quite a bit of my socks done – in fact almost all of the progress I made is where I still am – I’ve only knitted a couple more rows since my holiday. [I confess, I have been neglecting the sock]
The rest of the family had been to Blizzard Beach, which my dad assured me wasn’t as good as Wet’n’Wild. I felt less disappointed then. That evening the plan was to go to old town. This was, unfortunately, largely for Leon to go see the pimped cars. I got Leon up and took him outside with a drink to see how he coped with being up. He didn’t cope, so I asked if someone would collect me a takeaway from somewhere and then Leon and I stayed at the Villa watching terrible American TV. They were also showing the film Bedazzled (the recent version) which was an interesting concept, but pretty pants viewing – especially with commercials every ten minutes!

On the Saturday Leon was feeling a little better, and we managed to convince him to go shopping. I had been looking forward to this shopping trip, though Leon might have felt better had we left him at home! However, I went to the Converse store and bought two pairs of converse trainers. I couldn’t justify more, and it’s a good job because the big case was heavy!
That done, and a couple more shops perused, we headed back via Dunkin’ Donuts for donuts (or in my case a bagel) which was nice. We had an hour back at the villa before more shopping wandering aimlessly around a mall.
That evening we were down for the Pirates dinner adventure
It was an interesting show of acrobatics and a little drama, with audience participation and general noisiness. Our pirate was the Red Pirate (Aar!) or Cutthroat Jack. Sadlly, I think that the story was geared against him being a winner.
Anyway, as well as cheering Jack (Yey! Woo!) and jeering the other pirates (boo!) I actually got to join in. Jack picked me to be one of the “treasure hunters” (oddly we were all girls; I am pleased I put on my pretty frock and combed my hair) where I had to grab a flag and run it up a flag pole. I was very quick, but one of the girls on my team dropped the flag off the pole and had to begin again. Boo. It was fun though!
Holiday Update Post – Day 14 – Kennedy Space Centre
On the Sunday we decided that we really needed to go to the Kennedy Space Centre, so we all hopped into the van. I had a bit of a ‘mare and had to let Dad drive.
Anyway, we did get there in one piece. We started the day in the Rocket Garden, where I got ridiculously sunburnt (we lost our sun screen on the Mummy ride, I think) but I really liked looking at all the rockets and stuff. I think that my favourite was the Saturn rocket because that is the one they used to take people to the moon.
We spent a few moments in the memorial garden too; there are quite a lot of people who have died as part of the space program. The plaque for the Challenger incident was touching, but it is usually the Apollo 1 mission that makes me both sad and proud of these brave men and women.
We watched some more imax and a film narrated by Sisko from DS9 before we went on the tour. We got to get much closer to the launch pads, and I learnt that they don’t call it “blast off” because that sounds a bit violent! We also spent some time in the Apollo museum, which has lots of left-overs which should have gone to the moon in the last few missions which never happened.
The tour took ages but still left us with a half hour to look around the astronaut hall of fame. There we learnt about the astronauts themselves. Some of the astronauts have seven mission badges. That’s pretty cool.

Holiday Update Post – Day 15
We decided to make the most of our last day in Florida, the flight being quite late, so we opted for an early check in for the bags and went to the Wonderworks after breakfast. Wonderworks are more about interesting things rather than the unbelievable things at Ripley’s. I liked the pretty wall that you could dance to make the patterns. That was way too much fun. I didn’t like putting my hand in the water that was as cold as the water where the Titanic sank. Leon got to land the space shuttle (in a simulator) and we all did a quiz to see how old we are. I lost three years, which is nice.
We wandered around another mall and then headed down to Old Street Station. It’s pretty much closed down now, but the old buildings were cool. I felt a little bit like someone was going to rob me though. Eek.

Post Holiday Blues
We flew back overnight. Leon managed to sleep on the plane, I tried to but didn’t really settle. However, the train was pretty much waiting for us after the nightmare that is baggage collection, and mum and dad just made theirs with seconds to spare! We got back to York, and back to our house and I couldn’t help but sit down and have a little cry. I was tired and cold (very cold, it was 15 degrees – that’s colder than the night time lows had been) and just wanted to be somewhere else. Happily, my love of York has returned. Being back at work sucks too, but I have to earn the money to pay for our fun holidays somehow!