Saturday, March 21, 2009

Wrap up and good bye

Sorry I didn't post yesterday. I was dog tired. Walking around the world will do that to you.

Yesterday we spent the day at Epcot. We saw the best 3-D movie--Honey, I Shrunk the Audience. The floor shook, things came flying at us and to top it all off, a dog sneezed on us and we all got sprayed. Could've done without that, but overall it was very cool.

Our favorite ride of all was Soarin'. It wasn't anything that jerked you around, but you would swear that you were really flying. Cool air in your face, flying through citrus groves really smells like citrus, and flying through the forest smells like pine. It was by far, the best ride.

Then, we took a trip around the world. We had a fabulous lunch in France and enjoyed, well, Danish in Norway. Here's us goofing around on Morocco:





Then, today, we visited Animal Kingdom. It was our favorite park overall. We rode Everest, went on safari and cruised through the jungle.



And we met someone very famous:



It was a great trip. We hate to leave, it seems like our vacation just got started. See you soon!

Friday, March 20, 2009

The end of a great day!

Bibbity-bobbity-boo-yaah!

After Tim's presentation yesterday (he was much in demand), our travels (and a shuttle bus, then a monorail) took us to the Magic Kingdom.

First, we took the train all the way around the park, just to get the lay of the land. Then, we started to wander. Our first stop was Mike Wizowski's comedy room. If you saw the movie Monsters, Inc., you'll recognize Mike as the little green eyeball guy voiced by Billy Crystal. This show was a hoot. It was a stand-up comendy show by the monsters. Including Roz (look her photo up--it's worth it).

The show was interactive, so the monsters picked on people from the audience. Especially when the monster on stage asked someone to shout out the name of a country and the loudest response was, "TEXAS!"

I could make a political commentary right now, but we'll keep the focus on travel...



We tried getting on Space Mountain, but the FastPass option was broke and we're too old (mentally, not physicially) to stand in line for a roller coaster for more than an hour.



Perhaps the highlight of my day was when we went into the ice cream parlor to get Tim the sundae he was jonesin' for and I realized they had dairy-free ice cream!

Yesterday was a huge day. We saw no fewer than three parades, if you can believe it. And those were just the ones we couldn't avoid.

We're off to Epcot today. Last night we made dinner reservations for a French restaurant for 3 p.m., which just solidifies our oldness. Actually, it was either 3 p.m. or 8:50 p.m. and I don't think either of us could hold out that long for food.

But the Flower and Garden show is happening at Epcot and today is the first day of spring!

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Disney--our first glimpse


After checking in to our first hotel (we're moving somewhere way cheaper this morning), we headed to Downtown Disney for a quick sandwich.

After we ate, we caught the shuttle to The Swan hotel, then we got the water ferry to Disney Studios. If we could have taken a bedouin caravan, our day would have been complete.

My top priority at Disney Studios was seeing the Muppets. The Muppets are from my generation. They're a group of monsters I can understand. I'm dreadfully out of the loop on princesses and High School Musical.

So Muppets 3-D it was. And it was cool. Nothing like the 3-D stuff we're used to. These things were in our face. Fozzie played a prank on us and squirted water from a flower on his lapel. And you know what? We got sprinkled!

Statler and Waldorf, of course, were in the balcony the entire time heckling the Muppets. Sweetums made a live appearance. It was completely cool.



After that, we just wandered around. If something looked interesting, we went in--if we could stand to wait in line. We managed to see the Chronicles of Narnia show, which was alright. I'm a literary sort and have read the entire series, so this was fun for me. Tim liked the swords.

Speaking of Tim, the conference where he's presenting is in the hotel. It's for geotechs (dirt and rocks). Since the rock hounds like to drill, this is the hands-on part of the conference:


A real barn-burner, huh?

Anyway, we're off to the Magic Kingdom today. Wish us luck!

A harrowing flight

I was a little worried about the flight to Florida. I thought it would be crammed with crabby kids who where yoinked out of bed earlier than normal, then strapped into a airplane seat for two hours.

I was wrong.

There were only two squirts on the flight. And they sat right behind me.

They didn't have volume control. Don't get me wrong, they had their cute moments--exclaiming, "I see the North Pole!" and "I have a buggar."

But, as any four-year-old will tell you, it's tough to sit still for a few hours. Just as I was getting to the end of my whining rope with these kids, the flight got very interesting.

I would call it a Sphincter Clenching Moment.

About an hour before we landed, someone two rows up from me shouted, "Help! Someone help!"

You can imagine what we all thought was about to happen. The menfolk stood up, but no mad highjacker appeared.

This may sound cruel, but believe me, it's not meant to be, I have never been so relieved to hear someone was having a ceasure.

Luckily, a nurse was sitting nearby and the girl came out of it relatively quickly. But, DAMN, scared the crap out of me.

I'll be back in a few to talk about our Disney experience yesterday.

Stay tuned.

Monday, March 16, 2009

We're goin' to Disney World!

We're fast approaching the day of jubliee--the day we take a vacation for the first time in a while and head to the unknown world of Disney.

We're both really looking forward to this. Tim has to present at a conference about rocks or dirt or something, but that's only for 90 minutes on Thursday. The rest of the time, we'll just have fun.

So, stay tuned. We'll travel blog March 18-22. You'll get all the gritty, gory details of how these two childless people handled the flight to family vacation land and our adventures to the happiest place on earth. It'll be the first time in a long time we're not skipping time zones, too, so some of our posts might actually be coherant. But probably not.

Follow my flight just scroll down to the lower left corner and check out the Flight Status area. I'm on flight 801 to Orlando. You might not even need a computer. Just look south into the sky. If you see something very white reflecting sunlight, it's probably my tanless skin having an atomic reaction to the sun.

We hope you have as much fun traveling with us as we do writing this blog!

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Paris planning brunch

We're planning our next trip to Europe with a group of friends and family. Paris is the destination for Dec. 26 through Jan. 9.

To officially kick-off the trip planning process, Tim and I hosted a brunch this morning. We had sweet and savory crepes as well as a few other delicious treats that really got us all in the mood for France:





Hope you'll follow our adventures. We'll have more people with us this time and they're all aware that if they travel with us, they agree to have their pictures and stories included on the blog. They're good sports.