Week 16: Antigua, Florida, and a cruise

We flew from Antigua, Guatemala to Fort Lauderdale in Florida last Thursday. After a delayed flight and a welcoming 2h waiting line at US immigrations, a rental car was waiting for us. Some three hours drive and we were finally sleeping at 2 AM. We visited Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, and Islands of Adventure at Universal Studios in Orlando. We also did some last minute shopping before boarding a cruise back to Europe.

On Monday we visited Nassau at the Bahamas. A one big gift shop if you ask me. On Wednesday we visited the old town of San Juan in Puerto Rico. Mirje spent a year there some time ago so she knows the city. She has still some friends there, and we were lucky to meet two of them in the evening.

Welcome to our weekly recap! This one's for April 17th-23rd, which is week 16, 2014.

Most memorable moment: When living in one place for a long time the memories of days start to melt together and eventually turn into one big memory blob representing an average day. What moments do you remember from the first week of March five years ago? Well, I don't remember anything specific either. I'm quite sure though that it will be hard for me to forget seeing a spacecraft launch, visiting Hogwarts and watching the views over Miami as the ship sailed off the harbor.

Surprise of the week: The demographic of the cruise guests is different than last time, making the whole experience somehow... different. Too early to say whether it's for good or bad. The average age of the guests might be as low as 50 years, and there are many children on board this time too.

Workwise: A lot of moving around often means smaller productivity. This time wasn't an exception. On the other hand, at the ship we were quickly at home and have our daily routines set up already.

What did we learn: While the Universal Studios theme park taught me a lot about entertainment industry I'd still say I got more out of the space center. One fact that I'm still trying to get my head around is the size of the NASA's Apollo space program in the 60's. There were over 400 000 people working to get a man on the Moon.

Food love: Foodwise our week wasn't any great success. We didn't even get good burgers in Florida. Our fast schedule required plenty of fast food, such as a big bucket full of chicken strips from a drive-in, flushed down with bucket of coffee from another drive-in. Yummy.

Random thought: The old story goes that Henry Ford said: You can have your car in any color as, as long as it's black. Apparently the times have changed in USA, and now you can have your car in grey and white as well. Our blue car made us feel special. And it was easy to find in big parking lots.

Tip of the week: If you plan renting a car in Florida you might want to pay some extra for the SunPass that lets you just drive through the many road tolls you're going to run into. There are tolls that you cannot pay at the booth at all and if you don't have a prepaid ticket you'll end up paying a $100 fine. So, the pass is also a sort of an insurance for those traps.

On the move again. Those postcards from Guatemala were finally posted in Florida. The post office at Hogsmeade provided us with lovely stamps with the flag of stars and stripes and a text saying USA forever!

Rocket Garden at Kennedy Space Center. People went to the moon already fifty years ago. I guess the rise of the Internet got us distracted. Why go to the stars if we can just relax and watch cat videos instead?

The retired Atlantis space shuttle was an impressive sight as well.

There it goes! We were just on time to watch the successfull launch of he SpaceX cargo spacecraft to the International space station. The era of private space flight has already started.

Muggles invading Hogsmeade at the Islands of Adventure in Orlando. This was my first ever visit to any big theme park. Wish I was twenty years younger and able to get immersed in the fantasy world. I couldn't help thinking about it also as a massive money making machine. I have to admit that the Harry Potter flying-over-Hogwarts-robot-hand-thing was very cool though!

The one on the right is our ship, the Adventure of Seas (Made in Finland).

Arriving in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The fortress reminds me of arriving in Helsinki by sea.

We had an hour or two to wonder around the pretty old town.

If Nassau made me want to get back on the ship, San Juan felt like a place I could have stayed a bit longer.

And that's it for our week. How was yours?

---

This post is part of Instagram Travel Thursday and all the pics are from our Instagram account. Instagram Travel Thursday ia a gathering of Instagram related blog posts every week. You can find a list of other participating posts, or add your own post, at Destination Unknown, Skimbaco Lifestyle or at many other hosts' sites. You can also participate by tagging your Instagram pics with #igtravelthursday.