Category: Trip

Today we took a day trip to a fishing village on the gulf coast called Tarpon Springs, known for sponges!

Yep, those are sea sponges. Every single souvenir shop sells them in all shapes and sizes. Curiously, this is a product for which I can barely think of a use (at least beyond the tiny ones!), but it was interesting regardless to look at them all.

It was a lazy, relaxing and (importantly) Disney-free day of browsing the shops, eating lunch in a delicious Greek restaurant and laughing at terrible souvenirs!

Of course, there were one or two great ‘souvenirs’ as well…

Tarpon Springs is right on the wharfs, and the tide was very high. So high in fact that the main road started to flood when we were there.

The drive home was in occasionally heavy rain, and dinner was fruit and salad (once again) from the grocery store. I also got this:

I’m typing this at night, in the room, listening to ostriches ‘croaking’ below our balcony. Tomorrow we’re going to wake at dawn and head to Magic Kingdom for 15 full hours!

Wish us luck 🙂

Disney’s Animal Kingdom is their animal park, famous for a large ‘savannah’ section through which guests go on guided truck tours. It’s quite a spectacular experience, and different almost every time since the animals are free-roaming. These photos are from the two ‘safaris’ we went on today:

That last shot was taken just after we had waited for the rhinos to cross the road. Here’s a shot that shows just how close the animals get to the (very open) truck:

The safari is fun, and especially beloved by KLS. We’ll likely return to the park later in the week to ride it again.

Of course as a Disney theme park there are rides and shows here as well and we did them all! The most famous is the ‘Expedition Everest’ coaster, which has gargantuan lines and made me motion sick!

We also went on the other ‘big’ rides; Dinosaur and Primeval Whirl (a wild mouse with spinning that interestingly didn’t make me ill), and saw the Finding Nemo and Lion King shows, the latter being especially entertaining.

There we are on Dinosaur, one of the rare occasions where Disney still allows guests to photograph the on-ride photo display screens (to save the cost of purchase!)

Animal Kingdom is the most beautiful of Disney parks, with intricately sculptured structures and so-perfect-it-must-be-by-design landscaping. The above and next photos were taken at various points in the park just walking around.

The giant tree is artificial, and the park’s centerpiece. The sculptured trunk contains hundreds of animals, and underneath the tree is a cavernous theater in which a 3D attraction is shown. It’s a nice place to avoid the rain…

For rain it did today! It was never heavy, and in fact was welcome since it lowered the temperature significantly. It also gave the few photos I took whilst my phone was in a plastic bag a nice soft focus effect:

I’ll end today’s post with a photo of a crystal tree we’ve been growing in our hotel room (we bought it at the airport!)

Pretty isn’t it? At home it may have lasted for years, but here it’s life will be measured in days…

…oh, the ant of the title? Yeah, I found it in my undies after it tried to bite my bum 🙂

The weather today was dangerous to human life, so we avoided the parks for some R&R.

We hit some of the local souvenir shops looking for one of my favorite travel experiences – the tacky postcard! And we were successful, so watch your mailboxes since 10 were sent today alone 🙂

Speaking of souvenir stores, this was one we went to:

They sold oranges and tacky souvenirs! I’ll spare you most of the details (beside, I may have purchased some…) but this photo should give an idea of the caliber of many of the shops we visited today:

Note particularly that the two shirts are stocked right next to each other 🙂

We also went to Downtown Disney, the Disney outdoor mall, where KLS had a cake…

I wore a hat…

And we saw the best Lego sculpture in the world!

In the afternoon I visited the hotel game room (rare these days) and sunk a few dollars into two pinball machines.

Tron Legacy is such a cheap game! Very often the ball just comes out of the launcher and is lost immediately! But I couldn’t stop playing because of Olivia Wilde’s pretty face on the board:

Yes, I’m simple like that 🙂

Today’s wildlife shots include one showing better how good our view is:

And two through-the-monocular shots of exotic beasts:

In the evening, we lazed in the pool and spa for a while:

Before I ended this relaxing day by blogging, which itself concluded with a photo of a Disney squirrel…