Orlando, FL ♥

Sorry I'm blogging about our trip over a month later! I really did try blogging about it a few weeks ago but my internet wasn't working for me. But we had an amazing time! We quickly learned how little change or cash we carried when we were scraping around my purse and his car trying to find change for the tolls....it would seem like somewhere on all the travel sites we looked at they would've mentioned pay tolls! We ended up not having enough change and had to mail in a check for not the $1.25...but 26.25....ugh! And we also got ourselves lost thinking that we'd easily find our way from the airport to the hotel and were very mistaken. it took us probably close to an hour getting from the airport to our hotel which would normally be about a 20 minute drive! But we finally got to our hotel and this was the view from our hotel! We stayed at the Wyndham Grand Orlando:

From our room we could watch the fireworks from Walt Disney World that went off every night at 9:00. They were so much fun to watch.  And down below was the pool and bar where we went every night.

The next day we went to Universal Studios to of course....go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

 This was the entrance to Harry Potter....look at all the people! Oh my it was so crowded there it was hard to move around. It was even harder to get into the shops which was a bummer because there was just SO many people. The rest of the park wasn't nearly as bad...most likely because EVERYONE was in Harry Potter world. It looked exactly like Hogsmeade though which was awesome!

Me with the conductor :)

Inside Hogwarts was a ride which at the time had a 90 minute wait so we decided to go back early on another day because we had a three day pass to Universal Studios. There were also a couple of other rides that also had long waits...including getting into Ollivanders Wand Shop...it was going to take over an hour to get in there. So our first day was mainly just looking at everything and taking pictures. They had a rollercoaster that was themed around the Triwizard Cup which was a LOT of fun and the ride inside Hogwarts was supposed to be like you were riding on a broom and that ride was crazy! I honestly don't know how Harry does it ;) Our first day here we went to Margaritaville and ate. Man they had amazing Margaritas :)

Our third day in Orlando we road tripped to Cape Canaveral and went to Kennedy Space Center. This place was unbelievable. We went on the "VIP" tour that took us inside the Vehicle Assembly Building.

This is the big building you always see on movies that the shuttles come out of :) In November they started letting people tour inside the building, which is the first time in 33 years that "non-essential personnel" have been allowed in here since they were always building shuttles and there was always gas and fuel and it wasn't very safe. But now that the space program has been closed down people can tour in here until they start building again. So that was really awesome that we were able to go inside this. This building was incredible. It was SO huge. It's the largest one story building in the world and it felt like you were going to fall over when you looked at the ceiling.

The bus drove us out as far as they could on to the Cape Canaveral air force base and here was a view of some of the launch pads. We were advised to NOT go on the grass due to the face that this river here is loaded with alligators and they're hard to see in the grass. That was comforting.

Here was part of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB)....this picture of course doesn't show all the way to the top. But still huge. Inside here was also the Discovery space shuttle! They were holding it here until they moved it to the Smithsonian in April. So that was also amazing that we got to see that.

This picture above was really cool. So because they're so close the the ocean they of course have hurricanes. So to ensure that the shuttles they build are safe, they build them in the middle of the building and then lift them with a crane in through that hole and onto the other wise there they can then move them outside and to the launch pad. It turns out the the newer shuttles like the Discovery only had a few inches of clearance between this hole and it took I think almost 9 hours to move it through it. Talk about stressful!!

This is a picture of pictures of them lifiting the shuttle. Pretty impressive! After touring through all of the building and watching an iMax movie about the Hubble and spending a good 7 hours here...we went to Cocoa Beach and walked in the Atlantic which was amazingly warm. We were pretty wiped from our day at the Kennedy Space Center and so we only walked around for a little bit and then headed back to Orlando.

Just to back track a little bit....this is a picture of the launch pad that sent man to the moon. And this next picture is an alligator that was a few feet from the bus.

The tour guide pointed out this alligator and as everyone was looking at it he said "So on your right is a launch pad that sent man to the moon....and on your left is an alligator" He was a pretty funny tour guide. Here is a picture of us on our tour. We're pretty close to the launch pad pictured above and the Atlantic is in the background.

This day of our trip was completely amazing and I definitely recommend people try to make a trip here if they are in Florida. It was amazing. Our next few days we went back to Universal Studios and left our cameras at home so we wouldn't have to worry about getting our cameras wet and went on all of the rides which were a ton of fun. We got there as soon as it opened so we the lines weren't quite as long. It was a ton of fun! We spent one day at Walt Disney World and just went to the Magical Kingdom and that was a lot of fun. And one day we spent basically sleeping the whole day because we were so worn out from all of our full days at the theme parks we still hadn't caught up with the time change. It was a good lazy day. :) We had such an amazing time and I can't wait until we start planning another trip. A week was definitely not enough time for a vacation. I was not ready to go back! And I was loving the weather. It was hard coming back to Lewiston where it was snowing!! But we definitely made lots of fun memories. :)