Been hanging out at Cindy’s place for the past couple of days and really enjoying ourselves. We arrived and were greeted at the door by a woman who looked several years older than Cindy was, which did throw me for a bit, but it was a trick by Cindy and her mother. Sneaky people, these Floridians.

Jose (Cindy’s hubby) was also tricky, because we were talking about a restaurant chain here called the “Outback Steakhouse”. I knew of it’s existence through the travelogues of other Aussies who’ve been to the US and the opinion is always the same - it’s not Aussie food at all. We had a lovely conversation about this for several minutes, and then he told me that we were eating there that evening. It was at that moment that I wanted to dig a deeper hole to crawl into.

Dinner was very nice even though it was not really Australian food. Basically, they just cook steaks and then name it after some Australian town. They do the same with most of the food, except for stuff they just make up - what is a Bloomin’ Onion?? - and pretend is Australian. At other times, they don’t even try to hide that it is not Australian, such as Cheesecake Olivia which is described as “New York style cheesecake”. And that’s Australian how exactly?

It did provide a few chuckles though, with the waitress not being able to pronounce the names of the towns properly, and a very distressed 25yo female standing in front of the toilets, desperately trying to figure out if she was a “sheila” or a “bloke”.

We’ve also seen a lot of older people on the beach in bathing costumes they really should not be wearing. Nobody here seems to give two hoots about skin cancer and it’s all about getting as copper and leathery as you can apparently. Lots of pretty young things here on Spring Break and of course I am not looking at any of the young girls in their itty bitty bikinis, just like Di is not perving on the cute guys butts.

We went to the Kennedy Space Centre, looking forward to having a stroll around, but it was not to be. In all the documentation and visitor magazines we have, including the 2001 edition of the AAA tourism book for the state of Florida, it says there is a free section of the centre, and tours are an additional US$8.00 each. However, when we got to the gate, it turns out that there is nothing free anymore and it costs US$24.00 to get inside. We gave it a miss and decided to spend the money somewhere else, since we were interested in the space race, but not that interested.

We’ve bought our Disney tickets now, and got a discount because Jose took us to the Air Force Base and got us discount tickets through his military connections. Yay. Still US$170.00 for the two of us to go for two days, but a saving of many dollars over the regular price.

The other thing that was exciting at Cindy’s was that I got a birthday cake made for me. Hip Hip Hooray for me! Cindy went to a lot of effort to make sure that there was both grass AND clover at the base of the cow’s feet.

Next time should be a report on how Mickey is doing, among other things…

Categories: Travel, Odyssey 2001