Florida!

Tampa

After our Californian adventures, we flew over to the East Coast to experience the hot and humid weather of Florida. Our first stop was Tampa, the lightning capital of the USA.

Tampa, the lightning capital. It stormed every day we were there.

Briefly on getting there

It took a full day to fly from LA to Tampa as we had to stop-over in Denver, Colorado, despite the fact that Denver is nowhere near the direction of Tampa. We discovered that this is because is Denver the hub for United Airlines, so it was pretty much impossible to find a direct flight.

Denver Airport is a massive airport with tornado shelters in the toilets.

Airlines in the USA have the reputation for being some of the worst in the world and true to the rumour, they are terrible. Firstly, they have a practice of overbooking. They will sell as many tickets as possible, regardless of the capacity of the plane. Of course, when everybody turns up they have a problem. Flights are delayed and people get angry. Sure enough, this is exactly what happened. Our flight from LA to Denver was overbooked by 54 passengers and was delayed! Even though we checked in 2 hours beforehand, we were still placed on the standby list. Fortunately we were able to get seats. Pretty much everybody else missed out, even a guy who was almost in tears because his brother was dying in hospital in Denver.

The plane was so full that a Chinese man had to sit on one of the seats that the flight attendants usually sit in, facing backward! The planes are old and dilapidated and look like they haven't had a decor change since the 1980s (they don't even have personal screens and didn't have enough headphones). The flight attendants were unprofessional, curt and were all over 40. Food is not available (even to purchase) on flights for less than 3 hours. On the flight from Denver to Tampa, the flight attendants started the inflight movie too late and had to stop it before it finished (they were very candid about it).

We stayed with our friends Scott and Fiona Custer in Tampa who used to go to our church in Melbourne. Scott is studying at Tampa University and lived for a year in Melbourne. Fiona is Australian. We had good times hanging out and they gave us a great taste of Tampa. Tampa is a quaint little city that sits in Tampa Bay, nestled next to St Petersburg. There is not really much to Tampa except the thunderstorms which are really a show to behold. It rained every day we were there and the lightning strikes really close.

We were impressed with the beautiful mansions that line the bay. The oldest part of Tampa is Ybor city, full of rich culture and nightlife that still stirs with the bygone days of the Cuban mafia and pirates. Other than that, Tampa seems to be a quiet city with some dangerous areas - there's a ghetto not far from the city centre.

Coming from Australia we just had to try the Outback Steakhouse, a supposedly Australian restaurant that has a chain all over the USA. The very first Outback Steakhouse was started in Tampa in 1988 by a group of Americans who liked Australia and who rode the wave of popularity created by the Crocodile Dundee movies around that time. Fiona happened to work there so we went there for lunch and a visit. The food was excellent but not very Australian - they have "made up" dishes like the "Bloomin Onion" which is a deep-fried onion - and the only Australian beer they have is Fosters (which as any Aussie knows, cannot be found anywhere in Australia as it's merely a cheap export beer). This was the first time we had ever tasted Fosters and it was terrible! We made sure we stuck to Budweiser in the US after this.

Us outside the very first Outback Steakhouse

Tampa has a small tram network

Candice, Nat and Scott pose on the bay

One of the little gems we discovered in Tampa was Wal Mart. Now for those of you who like a good bargain, Wal Mart is the place to go. If you think K-Mart in Australia is cheap, you'll be amazed at the price of things at Wal Mart. We saw jeans for as low as 8 bucks (and not too bad either), dickies for $10, chucks for $20 and a whole bunch of stuff for less than half the price you'd pay in Australia.

Fiona and Candice are happy to be at Wal Mart

On Tuesday evening, we got a real taste of American sport when we went to a minor league baseball game. Baseball is one of the 3 most popular sports in the US, along with American Football and Basketball. Baseball is to Americans like Cricket is to Australians - very important. Scott explained the rules to us before the game began and we soon got the hang of how the game works. This particular match was between the Tampa Yankees and the Daytona Cubs in the Florida State Baseball League. The Tampa Yankees are owned by the New York Yankees (America's richest baseball team) and in the pre-season the New York Yankees will actually come down and play exhibition games at this stadium. The stadium was fairly empty that night due to rain but could probably hold about 5,000 people at capacity. The Tampa Yankees won the match by 3 runs.

We ate hotdogs and pretzels and tried to sing baseball songs. Here are some shots of the action.

This is the nearby American Football stadium for the Tampa Bay Buckaneers NFL team.

On Wednesday, with the help of one of Scott and Fiona's friends, Sally (who is engaged to a US air-force officer), we managed to sneak into MacDill Air-force Base. The original goal was to use the swimming pool at the base which apparently has an amazing water slide, but when we arrived the pool was closed due to lightning danger. As you can imagine, being in Tampa this happens almost on a daily basis. The base was like a mini-town with its own tax-free supermarket, shops, bank and even Burger King.

Some shots of the base

It was in Tampa that we discovered another great fast food restaurant - Chipotle! This is a Mexican food chain which is owned by McDonalds but beats the pants of Taco Bell. The food was well-priced, relatively healthy and delicious. We stole a menu as a souvenir!

Nat trying his hand at driving left hand drive on the right hand side of the road!! We almost died, several times - it goes against nature to be on the wrong side of the road!

McDonalds in Tampa - puts a smile on my face

Orlando

That weekend we headed North to the central Floridan city of Orlando. We were joined by Scott and Whitney Waechter, friends of Scott and Fiona. Scott W is originally from Orlando so we had a local in our midst. Because Scott C works for Sheraton, we were able to score some amazing discounts at the two different Sheraton hotels we stayed at that weekend. It was refreshing to sit back and relax in luxury even if only for a couple of days!

A snippet of Orlando as we enter on the freeway

Orlando is a city not much bigger than Tampa. Most people go there for the theme parks like Disneyworld and Universal Studios (the US West Coast counterparts to the ones in California). The only reason we had heard of it was because of the Orlando Magic NBA team. Other than that there is not much to it.

On the Friday night we went to see "The Marriage Show" at Summit Church, Scott and Whitney's old church when they were living in Orlando. The show was sort of a Christian Letterman-style comedy show, hosted by a guy named John Raffenaud which centers around the theme of marriage. Quite entertaining actually. Oh and there was loads of free food which didn't hurt.

Shots from The Marriage Show

The crew at The Marriage Show

The Sheraton Safari claimed to have the longest "Python Slide" in the world. Whatever, it was fun

On the Saturday we went to Downtown Disney. Since we had already been to Disneyland in California, we didn't need to see Disneyworld here in Florida. Downtown Disney is a park unto itself though and it's free to enter.

Us on "Pleasure Island".

We saw the best magic show ever. This dude has skills.

Our favourite bit of Downtown Disney was Legoland! One of Nat's favourite things ever when he was a kid was lego so we went crazy. We will definitely be visiting the real Legoland in Denmark when we are there.

A lego dogsleigh

A lego version of the Millenium Falcon, we pose with a lego transformer.

We spent Saturday night at the SAK comedy show. SAK does live improv comedy all week and the weekends are usually packed. Apparently Wayne Brady got his start here so it has a good reputation. The show involved two teams of comedians battling it out for points in various comic games - sort of like "Who's Line Is It Anyway?".

One team of comedians in action

We ventured into the suburbs of Orlando to visit Scott W's family on the Sunday. Picturesque houses lined the streets reminiscent of "Leave It To Beaver". We ate good food and watched the Spain win the European Cup on a bigscreen.

Whitney, Scott, Scott and Fiona

Our very busy weekend in Orlando came to an end with a nice dinner at Pei Wei, a Chinese restaurant. We were joined by Brian and Hannah. Brian plays guitar in Copeland, a band we really dig, especially Candice (we had one of their songs at our wedding).

The crew at Pei Wei pose for one final pic

Thanks to both Scotts, Fiona and Whitney for a great week in the lovely US state of Florida. We had really wanted to make it to a small city called Melbourne just because it shares the name of our home city in Australia - but that will have to wait for next time. Maybe then we'll do Miami as well.

We then flew out of Orlando up the East Coast into Washington-Dulles International Airport in Virginia to make our way to Washington DC, the capital of the USA.