Thursday, June 28, 2007

Tourism To-Do's

After living in Orlando for two years, we've been able to hit most of the theme parks and Central Florida attractions. We've been to all of Disney: the Magic Kingdom, MGM, Epcot, and Animal Kingdom. The Magic Kingdom is my favorite because it’s a classic. MGM was beautiful during the Christmas season because they have a spectacular light show and fake snow which is great for Floridians. Epcot was our least favorite park, but we went during their annual food and wine festival, which made it worthwhile. And Animal Kingdom is a very impressive combination of rides and animals. We've been to Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. Islands of Adventure is by far one of the most fun parks there is. We also managed to get to Universal Studios during their Halloween extravaganza which includes tons of haunted houses. We went to Kennedy Space Center on a day that happened to be a ceremony for the astronaut hall of fame. We saw John Glenn, Jim Lovell (of Apollo 13 fame) and about 15 different astronauts. We were able to see a shuttle launch on the 4th of July, 2006 from Cocoa Beach and a shuttle launch a few weeks ago from our apartment balcony. And although we've now seen gators in the wild, I don't know if Robb will ever get over the fact that we never made it to Gatorland.

This past weekend Robb and I got in our last few touristy-things on our to-do list. We went back to Sea World one last time. We got a year-long pass in the spring and have enjoyed seeing the animal shows time and again, because they’re a little different each time. This weekend we even saw two new shows, which were wonderful. We’re really excited about moving to Seattle though and seeing a “Shamu” in the wild. (Pictured is a beluga whale from the Arctic attraction.)

We also went back to St. Augustine. For those that don’t know, St. Augustine is the oldest European settlement in the United States (older than Jamestown!) It’s a beautiful city with a Spanish fort and tons of history. They are well-known for their ghost tours of the city (third most haunted United States city). We went there for our mini-honeymoon 1.5 years ago, and one of the activities that we were most excited about was the ghost tour. However, we saved the ghost tour for our last night in town and it ended up being rained out. This weekend Robb and I drove back to St. Augustine and finally did the ghost tour. We definitely feel as though spirits were present because our pictures are pretty exciting. We were told that cameras are able to capture spirits faster than the human eye can and if you can see orbs in your picture, spirits are there. Please notice in this picture of a very old house (now a very awesome coffee shop) the several circles of light that look like smudges. Those are orbs. (Insert twighlight zone music now.)

1 comment:

Randy H. said...

Nice shot, Katherine! I'm just today getting to your webpage, as well as Robb's. Sometime I'll have to show you the photo taken in the cellar of a haunted house here in Topeka's Potwin neighborhood; the ghost or "orb" in the photo I have literally obliterates my face as I'm standing there with co-workers during a Halloween party. Once I had that roll of film developed and showed the shot to the other people who were there, we all heard the "Twilight Zone" theme, too. I eventually wrote a story about the house and it's hauntings, which was published in the Topeka paper; they didn't print the photo along with the story, though, and I don't remember why they made that decision.