my life

Keeping in the relaxed mood of the last few days we got up late and went for a swim and sunbathe. Still feeling slightly hungover we went to the lake that backs on to the hostel and hired out a couple of jet skis. It was $30 for half an hour, so it was a bit of a luxury, but if you don’t do these things when you are away then you’re never going to do them.

The whole decision was made slightly more scary due to the fact that the hostel warned against swimming in the lake because of snakes and alligators!

Undaunted we went anyway and had a right laugh. They were so damn fast! Neither of us fell off so that was a bonus.

We got back, had some food and did a bit more swimming and then went out with Eimear and Lisa for a few drinks. Boy can they drink! Started off in the Bamboo and then went on the TGI Fridays down the road. James had some expensive nachos and I had a Del Boy style Long Island Ice Tea. It got a little too expensive so we left and went to the 7-Eleven for more (cheaper) drink.

The hostel has a strict no-alcohol policy, which is odd to say the least. This meant that beer has to be smuggled about the place in pockets and jacket sleeves. We smuggled our beer out to the jetty on the lake that backs on to the hostel. The fact that the hostel backs on to a lake was amazing enough but the warm night and the beer just made it even more like paradise. We sat by the lake at 2am in shorts and t-shirts drinking cold beer. Life’s great sometimes.

As the World Cup Final was on at 7am we decided to stay up to watch it. To keep ourselves amused we played drinking games, during which a lightbulb was broken as part of a game whereby you had to pull on the lamp chain while chugging your beer (chug and tug – the Irish girls invented it), and Eimear declared herself Queen Eimear as she had actually managed to spit the coin back into the glass – an amazing thing which we had never seen the likes of before.

We ran out of beer at about the same time as the football started. At some point during the game we fell asleep, waking to see Ronaldo prancing around with the World Cup and his silly hair. This was at about 9am so technically we are in the next day…

So, today we packed up and got on a Lynx Bus (with an extremely friendly bus driver) and went to the hostel.When we got there we had the choice of staying in a room with 6 other blokes (which going on past experiences was not ideal) or staying in our own room with a TV and an en-suite bathroom for the same price. Needless to say we got our own room – hotel stylee!

This hostel is the best damn hostel we have stayed in. The thing has a water fountain, its own landscape gardener, a massive BBQ area, a lovely swimming pool and a jetski area on Lake Cecile. It’s really beautiful.

While eating our pasta in the communal kitchen we got chatting to 2 Irish girls called Eimear and Lisa and arranged to go out for a drink with the pair of them later that night. We decided to visit the bar exactly opposite the complex called ‘The Big Bamboo Bar’.

Now this place is like a mixture between someone’s front room and like a beach shack. They serve beer in jam jars and have a really good atmosphere. We all stayed there all night and got completely hammered. I have never known 2 girls to consume so much alcohol. I suppose they are just keeping up their Irish reputation.

Today we went to Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon Water Park. They have a wave pool there which belts out waves at an enourmous height. All of a sudden you hear this loud crashing sound and you see a massive wave coming towards you – it’s absoultely impossible to stand up in but even more fun to body surf on. Another attraction at the Typhoon Lagoon was a Kamikaze slide called Cowabunga Kamikaze (mmmm, radical).

When we got to the top of the mountain which the slide was on we found that one of the 3 slides was closed off. When we asked why we were told that there were technical difficulties. How technical can water coming down a big piece of plastic be? On further questioning we found out that there had been a (and I quote) “a faecial excretion” and they had to put some chemicals into the pool at the bottom of the slide.

So that gives you an idea of how steep this thing actually was – someone had actually shit themselves on the way down.

After a hard day’s swimming and sunbathing we took a trip to an ‘Eat All you Like’ Italian restaurant. It was 9 dollars but well worth it. We did quite well today, our only encounter with a mad person was a crazy old lady who shouted at us all the way down the street, telling us how she was going to have everybody arrested for being rude to her.

We later saw this same lady in a 7-Eleven at midnight, attempting to buy a troll on a skateboard – that midnight essential. You can just imagine her, sat at home, and the thought coming into her head, “I really need a troll on a skateboard, and I can’t wait until the morning.”

We went back to the Motel 6 (we’ve moved down 2!) for some well earned kip. Tomorrow we intend to book ourselves into the hostel. Yep, that’s right, there’s only one hostel in the whole of Orlando.

Checked out of the dodgy-as-hell motel and got a bus further down International Drive to get closer to Disney. We walked for a while and then got caught in a massive thunderstorm so we jumped in to the nearest taxi to get out of the rain. He dropped us at the cheapest hotel in the area – allegedly.

After showing them an advert in a magazine that said all of their rooms were $29 they made lots of excuses and said that the best they could do was $45. They insisted that this was still the cheapest in Florida!

We walked next door and booked in to a room for $33. Robbing twats.

Just as we were about to go out to the pool the rain caught up with us and confined us to our rooms. This was really heavy rain so I decided to go for a 2 mile walk to the nearest Burger King after seeing an advert on the TV for a “Homestyle Burger”. This was warm rain, so it was quite nice and unusual. It was so heavy though that within about 10 minutes, there must have been about 10cm of rain in some parts of the path – it was hard to walk through in flip flops as they kept flopping back under my feet.

I got back to the room nearly an hour later, wetter than I have ever been in my life (clothed anyway). Seeing as I was already wet and in the rain I went for a swim. Not only was it raining but the thunder and lightning was like nothing we have experienced before, and it was right above us too. It was warm rain though so it’s just like being in the shower with your clothes on.

After the rain had stopped James went in search of beach shoes. They are a pretty funky affair, made out of wet suit material. Nice. Anyways, after that we went to the International House of Pancakes and had … yep, you guessed it … salad. The salad was coated in sooo much dressing and grease that it might as well have been a burger. You can’t eat healthily here, even if you try, really you can’t.