Day Three.
The travel has been pretty taxing and the kids have been too tired to write up their adventures on the blog for today so here is what we got up to.
Early rise in Destin for the kids who went out for a walk along the beach whilst Carol and I got ready. They got some good pictures of the sunrise and some of the birds on the beach. The drive from Destin to Orlando was our longest yet.
The trip through Florida was interesting as we were passing through the remains of Hurricane Michael. It was incredible to see the destructive force of the wind through that area.
The roads in Florida do have a Toll system so we had to stop off to get a toll pass in order to make sure we were not held up. $4.99 for the transponder then $10 for the tolls themselves as a minimum. It’s worth doing this though as it saved us at a full hour of drive.
We stopped at our first family Waffle House for breakfast. It was fine. Quiet and the food was cheap and cheerful so we did not mind.
We had a few brief rest stops and stopped in Tallahassee for lunch (ended up buying Publix fried chicken which is the best supermarket fried chicken I have ever had).
Orlando is what we expected in a lot of ways and we were staying on I-drive which is obviously a major tourist trap. Our hotel was only 5 mins from Universal. We stayed at the Avanti Palms hotel resort which was cheap and convenient and had a nice pool.
For our first day we had travelled a long way so we did not want to brave any parks that day, so we headed to Disney Springs for a wander and something to eat. World’s largest Disney store and a huge Lego store also. Lots to see and live music all over the place so worth a visit as it is free to wander round.
It was packed as we suspected, and we ended up going to Planet Hollywood. I figured if we were going to spend a fortune on food (Disney is always expensive) then I would at least have an experience with it.
Planet Hollywood had some excellent stuff in there from the original R2D2 through to the door from Titanic which could easily fit two people ;-). Kevin’s sled from Home Alone is also in there. That’s one of our favorites as a family so it was nice to see.
Expensive meal but it was quite fun for the kids however we were all done in so an earlyish night was had by all and we were all giving it big z’s by 10.30pm