Monday 15th February

Our friends have joined us! Suzy and I have been friends since Primary school, and her three children get on famously with ours. Suzy's friend Angie from New Zealand has also joined the party. They're all staying in the apartment two doors down from us.

Now that there are ten of us we don't all fit in the minivan so several of us walked the mile to Walmart so that Suzy & co. could stock up. It was another opportunity to compare and contrast British and American supermarkets. Most things were more expensive at Walmart, with the exception of meat. I was interested to see that eggs had changed since my last visit to the US. One thing we found fun then was that American eggs are white, but this time we noticed that the regular barn (battery chicken) eggs were white, but all the free-range eggs were brown.

We went to McDonald's again. Grandma has now been to McDonald's twice (on consecutive days) in 77 years, so she's virtually a regular. At Walmart Grandma bought a hooded top for $3.50, and completely independently I bought the exact same one in a different colour. Obviously this means that Grandma dresses at the height of cutting-edge fashion. Or something.

Roderic came to collect the shopping and some of the shoppers, but Angie and I walked on to DollarTree. I do love a bargain shop, and DollarTree had some great deals. It's like Poundland, but cheaper, and with unusual and exotic stuff.

Holidays are my absolute favourite thing, and I tend to measure them in Perfect Moments. Today's was sitting on the patio with Hubby Dearest, eating corn dogs and chex mix for lunch, neither of which we can get at home.

In the evening the plan for us all to go to Golden Corral was somewhat scuppered by Peter falling ill, but on the plus side it meant that those who were able to go could fit in the minivan. Golden Corral is an all-you-can-eat buffet offering a range of cuisines. You pay on entry (about $10), and then just keep helping yourself until you explode.

I may have forgotten how very downmarket Golden Corral is, or maybe I've become a snob in the intervening years, but it's a great place to go if you're not feeling too good about yourself. Firstly, everyone there will be much fatter that you, and secondly they will all be much ruder. At one point the woman on the next table to us yelled at the waiter across the room, "Hey, we're thirsty here!" My British sensibilities quaked. I was thirsty too - those free refills are the only thing you have to rely on the waiter for - but the most I'd have considered is gently asking as he passed whether he wouldn't mind very much, if he wasn't too busy...

The décor is also pretty lacklustre, and the place is filthy, probably due to so many people wandering about carrying plastic plates piled high with greasy food. I may strike it off my list of places I have to visit every time I go to America. America can do great food (especially meat) but this isn't it.

Sunday 14th February 2016

Valentine's Day. My husband took me for a wonderful and delicious breakfast at a little romantic place we like to call McDonald's. In Walmart. With the kids and mother-in-law. (I'm a cheap date.) It was the mother-in-law's first visit to a McDonald's and she quite enjoyed her bacon and egg biscuit. (British friends, for biscuit think crumbly savoury scone.)

Then the joys of Walmart. I seriously love Walmart. I love that it sells everything I could ever imagine I needed (this one had a fishing rod department) except for the things I actually know I need. Today's challenge - find a packet of mixed nuts and a loaf of wholemeal bread for diabetic Grandma. We drew a complete blank on both, but I eventually found a loaf of white bread emblazoned with a slogan advertising the absence of high fructose corn syrup in its composition. (It still tasted curiously sweet, though. Why, oh why, would you put any sort of sweetener in bread?)

Grandma finds the British foods section.

Cheese was on our list. We remembered from our last visit that America really doesn't do cheese well, so weren't too disappointed to discover that even in the deli section there were no blue cheeses (like Stilton or Dolcelatte), no soft cheeses (like Brie or Camembert) and not so much as a goat's cheese or a roule. We settled for extra sharp cheddar. It wasn't.

We did get some truly wonderful and delicious things, though. Four different varieties of Ranch dressing. Ranch flavour Doritos with a Ranch dip. Ranch flavour Pringles. Seeing a theme here?

We enjoyed a lazy afternoon, catching up on sleep, unpacking, exploring, and reading. I even did some writing. Not much churching, though, for a Sunday. Maybe next week.

Prepared for anything.

Not the view from our apartment, but not far away.

Now this is genius.

Saturday 13th February 2016

Eating sandwiches because there
 was no McDonald's.

The journey reminded me of the downside of going to Florida. It's a blinkin' long way away! We left home at 6.30am and arrived at the resort at 5.30am according to our body clocks - half-past midnight local time. Highlights (or not) included:

• Trying (and failing) to find a McDonald's at Heathrow and Philadelphia airports. 

The contraband.

• Finding that the "Movies" section of the in-flight entertainment included six episodes of Foyle's War. Gosh, that series is good! Yes, I did a "Netflix" marathon at 35,000 feet.

• Having to go through the tightest security screening I've ever encountered, at Phily (I can call it that now that I've been there) despite having already been screened going out of Heathrow. Seriously, I was swabbed and x-rayed. But the tiny sniffer dogs were cute, and I still got my contraband through.

• A guy playing Il Giorni on the grand piano in one of the airports a week to the day (almost to the minute) since my daughter walked down the aisle to that same song played on a piano.

• The car rental desk trying (and failing) to persuade Roderic to pay an extra $15 a day to upgrade from the midsize we'd ordered to a bigger car, only for the guy in the garage to invite us to take any car we liked at no extra charge. We selected the Chrysler minivan, and it's a bit impressive. I've counted eight cupholders in it so far.

Forgotten your mascara?

• Vending machines. You can get everything in the universe from a vending machine in America. I rather liked the Ben & Jerry's one, and there was one for electronic gadgets too. (There's also one right outside our kitchen window at our apartment. It's almost like it's saying "Don't bother cooking tonight! Give the kids $2 each for a bag of Cheetos instead.)

• Traffic jams! We queued for ten minutes for the single open toll booth, and then we sat in a very frustrating 20-minute queue for the exit to our resort. We could see our resort right there at the side of the road, but couldn't get to it. Then when we did get to the resort they were doing a lot of building work (building a multi-storey car park and shops) and with it being Valentine's Day weekend the place was packed so we queued to drive round to our apartment. My poor husband spends a lot of his time in traffic jams during his working week, and we don't need any while we're on holiday. Please sort this out, Florida. Thank you.

• Finally stumbling into our lovely apartment in the wee small hours after 23 hours of travelling and ordering the kids to bed, only for them to insist on hooking up their devices to the (temperamental) wifi before they'd so much as take their shoes off.

I think calling this a "food court" was stretching it a bit. Those two eateries you see were all that was available.
(Courtesy of my new least-favourite airport, Philadelphia.)

Hari met an M&M

Friday 5th April 2013

(Happy First Contact Day everyone.)

Ceri-ism of the day (after I asked her what she had most enjoyed about our holiday): "Pizza".

Picture of the day:

Flamingo Bay pool where we hung out most days.

Thing unexpectedly found to have sugar in it of the day: Garlic bread.

Hellen's Version

Went to Aquatica again. It was overcast and only 23 degrees and rained.

Everyone Else Version

Went to Aquatica again. There was hardly anyone there so no queues for any of the rides and slides. The water was warm, the sun shone occasionally, and we had a wonderful relaxing day. Suzy & Co. went to Gatorland.


So we're packing and getting ready to go home, and I'm wishing we had at least another week here and counting down the days until we can come back (1,095). I've put together a list of the abiding memories I'll have of this wonderful family holiday:

• Finding that I’d packed a single table mat from my dining table at home.
• Running from the hurricane, and Hari banging desperately on the wrong door.
• Watching the Disney fireworks from the balcony each evening.
• A three-hour timeshare-selling presentation which involved both breakfast and lunch, but during which Brian entirely failed to notice that he was trying to sell a timeshare to the people who already had one, and completely ignoring the person who hadn’t...
• Jenny the ballet-dancing dolphin
• Snorkelling through grottos with Gwen
• Getting sunburnt so badly on my face that when my skin peeled off I looked like a zombie.
• Hot and sour soup at China Buffet.
• Falling in love with Windermere, even the Wal-Mart.
• Sugar in everything, even the bread.
• A bird stealing Gwen’s bread roll from the table when she went to get a drink.
• Sitting on the back of a paddle boat as Hari and Clara argued about who was steering.

Thursday 4th April 2013

Anna-ism of the day (speculating on why an elderly couple we met yesterday used to drive for 24 hours to get to the Temple rather than fly): "Perhaps it was before the cheap flights thing took off?"

Picture of the day: Ceri with Rainbow Dash before she was stuffed (the pony, not Ceri).

Thing unexpectedly found to have sugar in it of the day: Tinned beans

Hellen's Version

Rained, and I got soaked (and lost) going to the post office.

Everyone Else Version

We're gearing up for going home, sadly. No, I won't leave, you can't make me! That means I'm starting to get worried about the fact that we only have 45 minutes to make our connection in Atlanta and get on the flight to Heathrow. Apparently the airport claim it's do-able, but that might mean that an Olympic sprinter with one carry-on bag can do it, rather than a party of ten including four children under ten. My amazing subconscious has a habit of sorting stuff out for me while I sleep (seriously, several times I've awoken with an answer in my head) and this morning I opened my eyes to the obvious solution: change the first flight to an earlier one.

So I phoned Delta, but was told that I couldn't do so unless there was a good reason, such as our first flight looking likely to be delayed due to bad weather. I'm hoping for thunderstorms on Saturday morning. It could happen.

Florida isn't always sunny as we discovered again today, and when it rains it's fun to watch the Floridians panic. All the same, rather than lounge by the pool today we took Ceri to Florida Mall to spend the money she got from both Grandmas. She decided to go to Build-a-Bear workshop where they had her favourite My Little Pony, so she made and adopted Rainbow Dash. We also found a toy shop which sold Littlest Pet Shop figures (which Ceri collects) so that made short work of her dollars.

I should probably be offended, because we walked past a salesgirl hawking family photography packages (salespeople in America are very pushy) and she leapt out at me and suggested I might like a photograph done. I  replied, "Not while I look like this," and she nodded aquiesence and moved onto the next person. I am currently an ideal candidate for an extra in a zombie movie since my face is sunburnt and blistered and peeling.

On the way back we passed a car with the number plate "GODSFAV". That should have been picture of the day, except that I was scrabbling around in my bag for the phone at the crucial moment.

Suzy and Phil took their offspring to Magic Kingdom, where I expect they had to buy waterproof Disney ponchos, did lots of the indoor shows and didn't have to queue for very long for the rides.

Meanwhile once the rain cleared Hari and I headed down to the pool for a late night jacuzzi. It was full of Americans having drinking contests, but was nevertheless warm and comfortable. Hari got bored after five minutes.

Wednesday 3rd April 2013

Peter-ism of the day: "Is it true your brother likes my sister ... like that?"

Picture of the day (forgot to take my camera so it'll have to be this one from the web):

The Orlando Florida Temple

Thing unexpectedly found to have sugar in it of the day: Sliced ham

Hellen's Version

Coughed the whole time I was in the Temple. Taco Bell was a disappointment and it rained on our game of mini-golf.

Everyone Else Version

Today was a day for Roderic and I to spend together, in part as consolation for his having his birthday on a plane on the way here. We went to the Orlando Florida Temple first, since it's only ten minutes from our resort. It's a very big and extremely beautiful Temple, subtly decorated with symbols of the area, including intricately woven palm leaves depicted in gold tones across the ceiling. Since we both have bad coughs we opted not to do an endowment session for fear of spoiling it for everyone else, and instead we participated in sealings which is a quicker and more informal ordinance. As predicted I started coughing, but  as ever in the Temple we were well looked after and people appeared with cough sweets and water pretty quickly.

From there we went to Walmart and Boyd's LDS Books. The Walmart was smaller than the one near us (still much bigger than Morrison's though) and, dare I say it, really lovely. Still Walmart but ... nice, somehow. Beautifully neat and well laid out, much like the rest of Windermere (the area where the Temple is situated). We found we loved Windermere and would love to live there someday; it's the "posh end" of Orlando.

Taco Bell for lunch because we really liked Mexican food last time we were in America. Also since then the first three Taco Bell restaurants have opened in the UK, one of them in Basildon only ten minutes away from us. So we were quite disappointed to find that the US Taco Bell isn't anything like as good as the UK version. Mexican fries are the best!

Suzy had managed to make contact with an old friend who had emigrated to Florida twenty years ago, so we were excited to welcome her and her two sons to the joint apartment for dinner and a round of Pirates Mini-Golf.  It started raining as we were playing but, hardy Brits that we are, we carried on anyway. Until the thunder, at which point (possibly remembering last week’s hurricane) we returned the clubs and balls and headed back home pretty sharpish. Once there Suzy and her friend were able to renew their friendship and catch up on news from the intervening twenty years over  pizza and key lime pie.

Tuesday 2nd April 2013

[Note: Yes, there was probably a Monday 1st April yesterday. Can't remember much of it. I think we went to China Buffet for lunch and I had hot and sour soup for the first time and loved it, and the children all went nuts for fortune cookies. Apart from that it's a blank, though. What do they put in that soup?!?]

Picture of the Day: OK, so this is yesterday. Gregory with dessert. It didn't come out in the picture but he had  a huge plateful piled high with chocolate doughnuts and ice cream.

Thing unexpectedly found to have sugar in it of the day: Bean and cheese burrito.

Hellen's Version

Aquatica today, a water park better than Wet'n'Wild (not difficult)  but not as good as the Disney ones. The problem for me is that I'm terrified of heights, so while I'm generally okay with riding down a flume, I struggle to walk up the stairs to get to it in the first place, especially if those stairs are open. Disney waterparks are built around a mountain so rather than climb steps you wander up a meandering mountain trail, thus removing all the terror for me. Aquatica was all about the flights of steps, so I was limited in what I was able to go on.

Florida was too hot, and my girls and I all got horrendously sunburnt. I screamed all the way down one of the rides, much to the amusement of Gwen and Hari.

Everyone Else Version

Our family loves waterparks, and today it was a really relaxing day. We enjoyed the wave pool, rapids, lazy river (which takes you past dolphins and tropical fish) and the kiddie area was especially good, with flumes the adults could enjoy too. Food and drink was better value than the other parks had been too, and we all did the all-you-can-eat all-day buffet which was pretty good.