We went to a resort near Orlando and during the check in we received 100 USD in cash with a tiny string attached: to sit on a one hour sales presentation of their services. Cool! These guys really know how to sell things.

Next day we headed to Disneyland. A plastic-fantastic place if you ask me, but Paul enjoyed some of it. The experience however consisted a lot into waiting in line for an hour or so to go on a carousel for am minute or two or shake hand with a cartoon character.

To my surprise there were a lot of grown-ups without children visiting the park. I remember a Brazilian couple telling Mickey mouse that they traveled all the way just to see him. Oh dear!

We stayed for the one hour sales presentation in which they tried to sell us time-sharing villas. And it took three hours eating out time from our visit to Cape Canaveral and the NASA Space Center. Which was a biiiiiig shame.

The Kennedy Space Center is really worth visiting. From great presentations to shuttle launch simulation, which they say is as realistic as their simulators to train astronauts, is FANTASTIC !
We decided to ha again on our next trip to the US. One really needs a full day to enjoy this place.
On our bus tour they also pointed out to an eagle’s nest in one of the trees, that’s there for 47 years. It was about the size of a double bed and withstood a few hurricanes in all this time.
Next day we boarded a plane to Los Angeles, but first we missed it but this is a different story.

Our trip to the US had multiple motivations behind. One was to offer Paul a (lame) compensation for not going to Galapagos. For us, was a breath of chillier air and searching for new places to visit.

We landed in Miami late in the evening and, maybe due to my tan, everyone addressed at first in Spanish (even a very kind police officer who helped us finding our car rental agency). It felt good to speak again Spanish but I changed to English soon as, I have to admit my Spanish is not good enough.

The car we rented was supposed to be a compact but we received a much longer one (longer than the VW Touareg, the biggest car I ever owned). The trunk was so deep that in order to collect some things from the bottom, I really had to slide in to reach them.

We stopped in Fort Lauderdale for two nights…nothing special. We didn’t made it into Miami (city) and this was the beginning of a trip during which we didn’t see any big city, except for a short stop in Las Vegas.

We were served at a terrace by a young Slovakian girl and I asked her how was her life there: “Tough!” she replied but was confident that this will change in time. She arrived there just a few months before, alone, and hoped that things will change once she will get to know more people.

Next stop, Disneyland, Orlando.