Oh, internet, how I did miss thee! It never fails to amaze me just how much I depend on the internet these days and even though I’m not the most social of creatures, I still have a fairly active life online. I always read these reports on how people are so addicted to the internet, they break out into a sweat if they can’t get online. I’m glad to say I’m not that bad but I do miss it - it cannot be denied. The internet is a creative outlet for me more than anything else and that’s what I miss the most. I’d be sitting in the caravan, wondering about local history or something, and my fingers would itch to launch Safari but then I’d remember there was no internet. Bummer!

While there was a definite internet drought, the same can’t be said for rain. It rained most of the time we were there but there were dry spells where the sunshine was really warm. Saturday was the worst day with almost torrential rain the whole day which is very noisy in a caravan and it got very windy at night. We hadn’t made plans that day so it didn’t bother us too much. The new caravan also has heating and double-glazing so it is a lot warmer than the old one. We had the heating on once at the weekend as it was starting to get quite chilly and last night we had to have the fire on the lounge area. I really felt a difference in the air yesterday and being on the coast, it was quite windy most of the time.

The weather didn’t stop us from venturing out though. Since Ayrshire is Burns country, we did the whole Burns experience which was quite interesting. I’m not going into detail here though - you can read it when I launch Caledonia Heritage - soon. On Sunday, we went to the Ayr Flower Show and while it stayed dry, it was very muddy. I’m not really bothered about flower competitions but they had the biggest begonias I’ve ever seen and the colours were so amazing. The crafting stalls were more my cup of tea and some of the hand made stuff was so beautiful it made me feel totally inadequate. I’d love to be so gifted.

Monday, we headed up the coast to a small village called Girvan which was quite quaint, although there wasn’t a lot to do there. For the more adventurous, you can go on a boat trip to the Ailsa Craig which looks like a giant muffin sticking out of the sea. It has seal communities and birds, if that’s your thing.

We headed back down towards Ayr and stopped at a few other caravan parks. Culzean Bay Caravan Park is really small but it has amazing views. You can see Arran across the water and just behind that, the Mull of Kintyre. Yes, that Mull of Kintyre. On a clear day, it is reputed you can see Ireland but I reckon you would need pretty good eyesight for that. Culzean Castle looks amazing on the cliffside and I did take a photo but I think it was too far away and it blends it really well to the surrounding area.

Next, we stopped at Dunure which is a small village with a castle ruin. Dunure Castle is the ancient home of the Kennedys who moved to Culzean Castle and you can see why. You can actually go up into the ruin but you need a really good imagination to envisage how it would have looked way back in the day. It is placed on the cliff, much like Culzean, and it is a bit scary when it is windy.

I have a few photos I’m going to upload to Flickr later.

This was the day I seriously thought the hot weather was actually going to kill me. We headed down to Busch Gardens, a favourite with my aunt and uncle who think it is better than Animal Kingdom, and the weather changed to something terrifying. Suffocating humidity. It was fine when we first arrived but then it all began to change in the afternoon and I started to feel like I couldn’t breathe. Apparently it gets really humid when it is going to rain in Florida and my uncle said this was a preview of what it is like in the height of Summer only it is hotter then. Note to self: never, ever go somewhere in the peak Summer season.

I had to keep ducking into shops to cool off and there were a few times I’m sure there was no air to breathe. By the time we headed to the animal enclosures, I was heading straight for every fan I could find. Then, blessedly, the heavens opened and it rained! I just laughed and said it felt like home. Mind you, the rain was warm but did it feel good. Afterwards, the air was much fresher for a while much to my relief. There were a few more rumbles of thunder and eventually the rides were closed down so we figured there was more rain on the way and went to have lunch somewhere. By the time we left, you never would’ve believed it had rained at all.

The change in weather meant we had a doozy of a thunder storm on Sunday afternoon which dropped the temperature dramatically and the heat was much easier to bear the rest of the week.

There was a Musicfest going on at Busch Gardens and this is how I found out my uncle had deliberately planned to go on the Saturday. Frankie Valli was performing. All I know about this guy is he sang the theme song to the Grease movie and that’s all I want to know. He was terrible and the audience was made up of people twice my age. One woman, about my mother’s age, was doing this sexy little dance to her husband and I wanted to be sick. There’s a place for such antics and it is called a bedroom! I was even more pissed when I read Rick Springfield would be there the following day. I’m not a fan but at least he’s more my kind of music.

On the Friday, I started my period and since the temps were in the nineties again, I decided to stay in the villa because I just didn’t want to deal with the heat and cramps together. So, I’m just going to share some thoughts I had on the whole Florida experience so far.
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For some reason, my uncle really loves Universal and this was the reason we never went to Disney MGM. I enjoyed myself enough but, along with Epcot, this is one of the least interesting parks for me. We went to most of the shows, including the 3D Terminator and Shrek shows, the Earthquake and Twister shows, the Jaws ride and my favourite one: ET. I think the problem for me with Universal is that it has been seen so many times on TV that none of it is really new. I remember watching my uncle’s holiday videos of the Miami Vice stunt show and thinking it was really boring because I’d seen it on so many TV shows. Thankfully, it’s now gone.

I loved walking through the sets and much of if was so familiar despite the fact I’ve never been to Hollywood or New York. I searched in vain for Marilyn Monroe’s star in the Hollywood area but never found it unfortunately. I think Universal would’ve been more interesting to me if they’d had areas concentrating more on the nostalgia of a bygone era. I would’ve loved to have seen some of the old costumes the big movie stars wore. The closest thing they had was the I Love Lucy shrine which did have some costumes and stuff from the shows. I also didn’t realise Betty Boop was still so popular!

Having said that, I had more fun laughing at my mum’s reaction to some of the shows. We got soaked on the Jaws thing and by the time we got on the Earthquake showcase, her face was a picture when all the water started cascading down towards us. LOL!

The souvenirs were so expensive here - more so than Disney I thought. I have a thing where I buy keyrings wherever I go but I liked none of them here at all so my KSC keyring ended up being the only one I ever bought the whole trip.

I begin this post with a confession: I am totally opposed to animals being kept in captivity, yet I loved SeaWorld. Hypocrite, I know!

The park was only 15 minutes down the road from our villa, so we had breakfast and arrived just after ten. The first place we headed for was Key West and the dolphin area. There was already a huge queue to buy fish to feed them so we decided to try later on. We watched the dolphins swimming around for a while and I have to admit to having thoughts the pool didn’t seem all that big for the number of dolphins there. The dolphins seemed content enough and when we went to observe them underground, they really started showing off by doing twists in the water. We came back about 45 minutes later and had to stand in a queue for half an hour to buy our fish food. We were basically standing all that time in the open sun and I suffered for it later. I’m a fair-skinned Celt with reddish tones in my hair and we don’t tan - we burn! I can’t describe to you how thrilling it was to come so close to the dolphins and to actually feed them. The fact that those same dolphins are under so much stress from being held in captivity really fills me with guilt for enjoying this moment. I’ve never touched a dolphin in my life before and I’m in love with these amazing creatures!
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The day that I once again prove that I’m definitely not my mother’s daughter - I hate shopping with a passion.

Today was considered a rest day from the parks so we ended up traipsing around a load of different malls, all of which have a tendency to merge together in my head, how this is considered a rest is beyond me. Anyway, we started out at good old Walmart - yawn! Walmart owns the ASDA chain of stores in the UK thus the decided lack of enthusiasm on my part! Who wants to spend precious holiday time in a supermarket so much like one back home? The only part that intrigued me was the pharmacy! OMG, you can buy so much more stuff off the shelf in the US without having to answer a million embarrassing questions at the counter in the UK. I also noticed my contact solutions were nearly half the price they are in the UK which really did not please me at all. It’s not nice knowing you are being ripped off something terrible.

After that we headed to Kmart and Target, shops my uncle assured me were like M & S back home, which is an insult to dear old Marks and Sparks who have definitely revamped their image lately. I would say both shops were more like BHS (British Home Stores), except BHS mainly sells clothes. It didn’t take long for my eyes to glaze over with boredom.

We then headed up International Drive and hit some of the more exclusive areas, including one mall that was still being built. We didn’t linger long because it was too damn hot to walk about outside, the temp once again soaring above 90 degrees. The Florida Mall was thankfully indoors and is where you will find all those famous stores you hear about on TV: Macy’s, JC Penney and the uber expensive Saks Fifth Ave which scared us. It wasn’t long before my nose detected a Godiva chocolate shop but I was so jaded by that time, I couldn’t even summon the energy to sample some. So far, my impression of chocolate in America is not a good one. It’s revolting - simple as that.

I didn’t buy anything the whole day, although I did have a moment of ecstasy when I spotted an Apple store! I was dragged away before I could leave with a MacBook Pro under my arm! I still have loads of dollars left and they are so going into my Apple Fund!