“You never realise how much crap you’ve bought until you pack to go home….”

Our last couple of days were a bit more chilled out than haring it round on rollercoasters. Wednesday saw us get up leisurely, mooch on down to Vinelands mall to park and get the I-ride from stop 38 there to 14, which is where Five Guys was, as per Nathan’s request. From there, they could venture to play pirate golf whilst Brenda and I toured the last few shops along the road and tried to find a post office.We passed the big Coca Cola eye which I imagine held unprecedented views of the city, as well as the weird and unimaginable Ripleys Believe it or Not.We swung by Cheesecake Factory at the Florida Mall (probably incorrect) to purchase Cheesecake for pudding, but they had flamingos in the car park! They also had valet parking for $7.50, yet parking is free. I mean are some people really that lazy???

No it isn’t my dodgy photography. The building is literally built like it is shown! A very weird wonky building with an even cooler backwards clock! We managed to find a post office, bought a book of stamps, then had to buy postcards to put the stamps on and went back to meet the guys at the I-drive.We ventured to Chilli’s bar and grill for dinner and did what we did at Applebee’s. Bought a load of appetisers and ate those. Our waitress, Autumn was great and we asked if we could buy the cool wine ‘tumblers’ and she said no, but then proceeded to say she’s not the police. That led to us taking some awesome honey chipotle chicken away in a box, where I managed to stash the wine glasses, and Rich had the decanters in his pockets! We were the ultimate thieves 🤣!

As we drove back to the villa, we drove past Epic McD, which is the world biggest McDonald’s.Yes the photo is distorted at night, but nevertheless, it didn’t look much bigger in real life. You’d think it’d be huge but it wasn’t. Thursday. Nathan and Rich headed to Daytona beach. Brenda, Sam and I stayed at the villa, dodging the rain and soaking up the grey sky sun wherever we could! It was our last night so we went to Ovation for dinner where we all had some sort of meat, potato and salad. I had steak and chicken and is was delicious!

Friday morning consisted of us packing, repacking and packing again to ensure we were under our weight allowance as for some reason they don’t combine weights when we have flown recently! You never really how much crap you have bought until you have to stuff it into a case you cane out with! Whoops! Anyway, Nathan’s hand luggage broke so we had to locate two ‘Dicks sporting goods’ shops for him to try and exchange it. They’d sold out which the meant having to fish my other bag out of my case for me to use and him to have the backpack I had planned to use. At least it dropped my case weight down. I mean it was the heaviest!

We got to the airport in plenty of time, received our boarding passes, wandered round then settled on the plane.The inflight entertainment was atrocious. I meant the films were decades old. Thank god I had downloaded vampire diaries and had my Harry Potter colour in postcards! Crisis averted! The flight seemed to go really quickly. I ate Nathan’s food, chicken and veg in a Dijon sauce was delicious as was the Sara Lee chocolate cake (no I didn’t eat both of those). We landed in no time but a bloody BA plane was hogging our spot on the parking lot so we had to wait.

Eventually we parked and for some reason, we got through passport control with incredible ease! It was insane! Good don’t get me wrong, but crikey, you don’t think you’d get through that quick! Then it was on to luggage collection and out to find the bus to the car! It had been a fun two weeks in Orlando! I had conquered fears, experienced a place I never realised the capacity of and had a pool at our beck and call for two weeks! Bliss! Now…a 48 hour turnaround and back out on leg number 3 of our adventure…..

Until next time….