*Shakes Blog* I'm back in one piece hehe!
Music: Jay Gordon - 'Slept So Long'

What can I say, Florida was awesome, hectic in that 'we're really trying to squish much too much into this short time' kinda way so every muscle hurts and I'm exhausted, and damn hot but good :D And I only managed to annoy my sis and our friend twice by being strange heheh! Once when we suddenly hit some sort of stadium, fluorescent lighting while driving, that seemed to have replaced the normal road lighting, which freaked me out as it was late, dark and I had been more used to the previous lower level lighting. It seared the back of my eyes and gave me a headache which pissed me off. Second time was down to noise, too sudden, too loud and right next to me, something I very much hate, and as my ears can be quite sensitive can sometimes hurt. This made me swing round on it while 'grrrrrrrr'ing and looking unhappy and of course had my two companions wondering just how my mental health was lol! (a previous boss who I had warned not to do that, come up behind me, or too close and shout, or scream thought I was joking and decided it would be funny to do just that. The look on his face was a picture when my arm instinctively went back and as I turned round I just managed to avoid bopping him in the face. He's a good humored fellow though and was like 'wow, well ok then!' lol!)

Now, back to the trip! Left Friday evening (3rd) and flew to Manchester, where I met my sis and friend who had driven from Scotland. I was then informed that as it had been an after thought that I should come along all accommodation had only been booked for two people and I was going to have to sneak into the hotel they had decided to stay in for the night and get to the room as our flight wasn't leaving until early Saturday morning. They went on ahead in, and trying not to look suspicious I did my best to look like I was supposed to be there and follow not too close behind hoping no-one would stop me or question me. I do a good 'Inconspicuous' so I got a way with it.

Saturday: We head off for Manchester airport, and about 8 hours or so later we arrive in Sanford. We pick up our convertible (silver and black, yeah I'm a girl don't ask me what 'make' it was lol! :p) and start on our way to International Drive where the hotel is (again, I don't exist so I had to hide in the car until the others found out where the room was and as you didn't need to go through reception after that again, because it was all outside access, we were fine heheheh!) . Immediately we get there we just dump everything and go find the nearest building where we can shop. Stuff is seriously, seriously so much cheaper we just didn't know what to do with ourselves lol! We could have gone crazy! We stayed there until we couldn't walk anymore and fell into bed determined to really shop the next day.

Sunday: We hit the shops as we had talked about. Florida Mall, then another huge mall that we arrived at a little after 11am and left at around 9pm when it was closing. Starving, we grabbed some food and it was bedtime once again as we had to be up again at about 7am so we could all shower and be out at SeaWorld for 9am.

Monday: SeaWorld was cool for me. I'm a huge animal lover so I spent the day running around petting dolphins, watching the penguins and seals, the turtles, stingrays, manatees, ohhhing and ahhhing at the sharks and pointing and squealing at squirrels like I hadn't seen one before (well ya don't get many of them around here lol!) I was dragged to a couple of rides Kraken which as one of the first major roller coasters I have ever done scared me witless and took some persuasion... We then did Journey To Atlantis which was quite fun even if the 60ft drop made my stomach feel like it wanted to have a look too lol! I'm not so good on rides *laughs* The highlight of the day for me though had to be Shamu That was just incredible. I was blown away. Drenched from the water ride and Shamu, we went home, got changed and headed for City Walk as we wanted to eat at the Hard Rock there. Having finished eating, I'm looking about, seeing what's in the shop and stuff, singing away to a Korn song when a door opens from the side and I realize there is a concert and yeah, it clicks, Korn are in the hard rock and I've missed it... My sis disappears, and comes back telling me she'd been trying to get me in, the guy was really nice and said maybe if we'd been just a little earlier but it was the encore, last song and they were buggering off anyway *huff* We spilled out with the concert crowd, decided to have another look around and headed back to our beds.

Tuesday: More shopping until everyone dropped heh!

Wednesday: Animal Kingdom where we did the safari which for me again was amazing, DinoLand, the river rapids ride (which I thought a little disappointing), Tarzan Rocks and the highlight for me the Festival of the Lion King.

Thursday: Was relatively easy, we headed to Clearwater beach for a day of relaxing. I'm not a sun worshipper, I prefer beaches later in the evening, cooler and quieter so being there during the day I was covered in factor 60 sunscreen and hired a big umbrella lol! It was so beautiful though, I lay there with my eyes closed, shaded and listening to the water. We'd been so rushed, and spending hours on our feet shopping or walking the parks in the heat that it was nice to chill out for a day. We left there, changed again at home and headed out to City Walk again.

Friday: Universal!!!!!!!!!!!! woot! Total sensory overload for me! We did just about everything there ride wise, barring the kids stuff, favs for me being Shrek 4-D, Revenge Of The Mummy and Men In Black cause you got to shoot at things and save the universe *giggles* Then it was onto Islands Of Adventure. I was made again do scary rides lol! Like the Hulk Coaster, Doctor Doom's Fearfall, Duelling Dragons Of course being that the dragons incorporated 2 coasters we had to do both and after that I was heading for barf city. Also bear in mind I'm a tiny being, barely scraping some of the height requirements (and having to do a little hop up into the seats lol!) for some of these things so I was getting pretty thrown about. Add that to just how petrified I was/am of coaster type things and you can just imagine what my blood preasure and heart rate were doing lol!. Highlights for me there had to be Jurassic Park River Adventure and Spiderman which for me was too cool for words!

Saturday of course we had to leave, sadly, and that's the end of my little US adventure hehe!