Day 4 – One last hurrah

While driving through Orlando and the surrounding suburbs (Kissimmee especially) we were amazed at the touristy-ness of it all. It’s covered with hotels, fast food chains, outlet stores, and tourist information booths each claiming to have the cheapest theme park tickets. One other establishment that appeared frequently was the good ‘ol mini golf course.

Now these things look awesome. Not at all like Aspley Putt Putt. They are extensively themed and we couldn’t resist a quick 18 holes at the Pirate’s Island Adventure Golf course. They had two courses to choose from and we bravely selected the more difficult Black Beard’s challenge.

By taking some liberties with our scoring methods and inventing a new rule for ‘practice’ shots we managed to come in around par: Gerrod was two below, and I was four above.

We then hit the Interstate-4 again for the trip back to Tampa. It was safe and uneventful and put us at the airport about two hours early. So what did we do? Had a Kath and Kel style airport vacation!

We toured the airport, had some gourmet coffees (anything espresso based is hard to find in these parts), then counted out all the pesky pennies, nickels and dimes in our pockets. We came up with 75c each and decided to try to spend it! It’s a great game (Durham jrs would love it!) and a great way to kill time.

But be warned kiddies, 75c doesn’t get you much these days. We could have had three 25c sherbert sticks, but with tax we would have still come up short. So instead, we pooled our ‘savings’ and splurged on a giant Twix. We’re looking forward to sharing it on the journey home!

This trip has been great, childlike fun and we’ve discovered that everything you imagine about Florida is true. The tourism industry is booming, the population is older (think Caloundra), the sun is hotter (we’ve got the sunburn to prove it), the people are friendlier and the fashions are daggier (think hawaiian shirts and lotsa thongs). In fact, apart from driving on the right hand side, it felt a lot like home.

Update: Photos from Epcot are now up on the albums page.