Day 1: "It's definitely not on Snow St"
I got up at about 5am after not really getting to sleep until at least 1am. Sonja was up early to go to work so I got to say good bye. Dave drove me to the airport and I when the lady at security checked my passport she said "cheers". This has happened a couple of times before but it just didn't register. Oh those Americans! I had a short, easy flight to Tampa. When I arrived Dani showed me the roof of the car park and a really nice view of downtown in the distance, she said she always does that if she picks someone up from the airport. We went back to her place and chilled until about 6pm. Dani really wanted me to have some good veggie food so we did a bit of research and found a couple of places nearby. We ended up spending an hour trying to find a place, mainly because Dani didn't believe the street name I'd written down and thought it was somewhere else. Of course when we eventually found it the place was closed. There was some sort of street party going on near it which added to the difficulty of finding it. We gave up and headed to Qdoba, a Mexican fast food place near to Dani's apartment. I had veggie gumbo which was actually quite nice. I like these Mexican places, I must petition to get them in England.
Day 1: "They sure swim fast don't they?!"
I woke up deciding I needed to get my hair cut. I researched a few places and settled on one round the corner from Dani's called Toni's. We figured it was short for Antonio so were expecting a Mediterranean..... more fool us. It was an East Asian dude with diamond earrings and beautifully kept silver hair. He was very efficient to say the least, I was only the chair for about ten minutes. He had a cool hair sucker thing attached to the clippers which I've only seen before at the dentists.... for teeth rather than hair. We then went thrift shopping because I was after some new shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, I think the 90°F+ temperature had gone to my head. I didn't find any shorts and all of the shirts were too big for me. In most of the shops we went in the shirt sizing by section was SMMMLLLLLXLXLXLXLXLXLXLXLXLXLXLXLXLXLXLXL. I noticed that the other guys shopping there were either massive or they were wearing shirts that were way too big for them. Food time! We went to a place that I'd researched the previous night called Chaat. Dani had never had Indian food before so I figured it was about time someone introduced her to it. They had a lunch buffet for under $7 which was purely vegetarian, I got a bowl of each thing and Dani tried most of the stuff. It was all a bit hot for her and the milder coconutty stuff was not to her taste. I ate more than my belly could take. The best purchased food that I've had on this trip has been Indian. The staff very friendly too and they let us try a nice little sweet thing for free. Dani wanted to show me sunset at the beach so we headed to Treasure Island beach in Saint Petersburg (near Tampa). The shell and rock filled sand was a bit hard to walk with bare feet but the view was really pretty and I was surprised how warm it was even that late in the day. The sunset was stunning and I even got to see some dolphins swimming out at sea. Dani said that was rare, the only disappointment I had was that for a split second I thought they were sharks. There was a guy trying and failing to run alongside the dolphins, "They sure swim fast don't they?!" he panted. On the way back we stopped in to see Dani's friends David and Rick, they were nice and we chilled at their place for a little bit. Rick let Dani borrow some horror films and so that night when we got back I watched Dawn Of The Dead (I've been to that mall!) and Night Of The Living Dead while Dani did some sewing on her friend's Halloween costume.
Day 3: "Denny's wins!"
We got up at around 9am on Friday and went to the library to print off the BOGOF voucher for Kennedy Space Center... then we drove to Kennedy Space Center. It was about a two hour drive and I had my mp3 player hooked up the car stereo so we were wonderfully entertained for the whole journey. As we approached Cave Canaveral there were some dolphins swimming out in the water alongside the bridge. We arrived at about 2pm and started with the two hour tour of the area. We got to see Discovery from a distance, it was on the launch pad being prepped for launch. At the time of writing this it still hasn't been launched but it was meant to happen three days after we were there. Part of the tour took place in the actual control center for Saturn V... which was nice. There was lots of space stuff, all of which I'd forgotten from From The Earth To The Moon, then we went back to the main center. We watched a 3D film about the 2009 repairs that were done to the Hubble telescope, it was narrated by Leo DiCaprio, he drives a Prius, he kept mentioning how precious our planet is. It was a really good film though. Then we went on the space shuttle simulator... because you have to don't you? We sat down and it shook a bit. On the way back Dani wanted me to a beach on the east coast but it was late and there wasn't an obvious place to go so in the end we gave up and went to Denny's. I knew they had a nice veggie burger so it's always my safe veggie back-up. When we got back to Tampa we saw lots of strangely dressed people lining up for a Halloween party. There were also some women in only their underwear but I couldn't turn my camera on quick enough to get them. We continued the tradition of having one cider every night and I went to bed at about 4am.
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