my life

We slept in, still recouperating from our travels, but we were woken by room service. Room Service! It’s a whole lot better than being woken by strange noises from old and perverted men.Luckily enough we were just in time for breakfast. Had coffee and toast, bagels, orange juice and fruit loops. Beats Twinkies and Juicy Fruit Chewing Gum I can tell you.

Strolled around the area for a bit and had a talk with a discount ticket guy called Mike. They have a lot of these things around here. The idea is that you sit and listen to some geezer trying to sell you a timeshare and then you get cheaper tickets.

It’s interesting talking to guys on commission, especially when you know you’re not going to buy anything.

After getting all the information we could out of him, we went to look for an internet cafe. We hadn’t updated this blog for a while, and found a little Brazilian place on International Drive. Had a really good, cheap meal of eggs, steak, rice, black beans, salad and a Coke for $5. Then had a strawberry chocolate cake for $1.50. Florida is great! We can live like kings for half the money it takes to survive in New York.

After we got back to the hotel we went for a swim. We got talking to a couple from Clacton, and a 10 year old American kid called Timmy (Timaaee!). He wondered which language the English spoke. He was amazed that we had Playstations, TVs, and even more amazed that ‘Timmy’ was actually said and spelt the same in English as it was in American. Crazy! Well, at least he was 10 and had an excuse (unlike a few others we have met).

After swimming we started to get ready to go out when a lady knocked at our door. I answered the door just as James was getting out of the shower. We were confronted with a scraggy looking 30-40ish bleached blonde. I think the correct term of explanation is TPT (Trailer Park Trash).

After some light chit-chat she asked us if we were from Canada (?) and then asked if we wanted any fun. When I said that we would probably be having fun later on tonight as we were going out she replied, “No, I mean money-fun”.

Hmmmm. When we refused she said that she was just joking (as you do!) and wanted $5 for cigarettes instead. When we didn’t give her anything, she just left, giggling. Mad fucker!

Thinking that this would be the last incident of the evening we went out to City Walk in Universal Studios. It is the night-club distrcit of the park, somewhere for the adults to go after the kiddies are in bed or something.

We got there at 10.30pm and most places were closing up!! Grabbed a pizza from the only place still open serving food, and went looking for alcohol. It was quite strange as there were still quite a lot of kids walking about. Had a quick Margaritaand headed in to ‘The Groove’ – a nightclub. Oh dear, oh dear. It wasn’t exactly the best nightclub in the world. Like a mixture of LAs and Tower, it was full of tourist types, some even still carrying their shopping bags.

We left after about 2 hours and got a taxi home. Whilst standing at the door of our room drinking Budweiser and watching the palm trees, a strange gentlemen approached. He said he was with a security firm and we had broken resort rules by being up too late and jaywalking.

It turned out that he was joking and then said that he was collecting for charity – at 3am in the morning – err, okay. We said we had no money, but that he was welcome to a beer. He accepted (as all good charity collectors do!)

After a while he asked us ‘if we liked to party?‘ – after our last encounter we asked him to be more specific. Strange men late at night asking us if we wanted to party – it could have got messy.

He expanded: ‘do you like to get high?‘. Funnily enough if we did he could get us some Valium. This certainly explained his odd look.

‘You’re on holiday, right? You want valium, right? You’re on holiday!‘ The whole time he was staring straight in to my eyes. We turned down his offer, it was all quite unnerving and we decided to check out the next morning.

Still at the Jacksonville train station (yawl) at 6am we started to tuck into a wholesome breakfast consisting mainly of Twinkies, Mountain Dew, sunflower seeds, Juicy Fruit chewing gum and minging hard cheese squares. About as nice as it sounds.

Got on the train (again delayed) and made our way down to Orlando. After 4 hours we arrived, very tired after not sleeping for about 30 hours. After cunningly avoiding getting scammed by a taxi driver ($40), and haggling with the hotels we caught a bus to our latest home – the Super 8 Motel. The bus was $1. Bloody taxi drivers – same the whole world over.

The Super 8 Motel is a Motel. The ‘Super’ part is a bit of an understatement to be honest: It has a pool, free breakfast, and frogs that climb doors. Who could ask for more?

All of this luxury for the same price as sharing a room with 12 other sweaty blokes, some with perverted tendencies. Ace!

After having a little nap and showering up we took a walk around the area in search of food. We ended up at Denny’s Diner – a 50s American style place with decent food and even better music. After a healthy meal of fried up fried stuff we went back to our motel for a very well-earned sleep.

We both met up at 10.30 and checked out. Walked in the heat to Union Station, James’ stories of the previous night keeping us both amused. Found out that the train we wanted was sold out, except for business class, so we forked out a premium for the last 2 seats on the train. The good news was that we got films and free soft drinks (invaluable on a 14 hour train journey).

As the train was delayed it meant that we wouldn’t get in to Savannah, Georgia (our planned destination) until after midnight (Midnight Train to Georgia!) The train left at 12.45AM.

Instead we decided to stay on the train until Jacksonville (the city with the largest land area in the USA). Sleep is for wimps anyway. If we stay up all night we don’t have to pay for a room either, so that’s a bonus.

Got in to Jacksonville at about 2.30am, the next train to Orlando, Florida (the home of Disney World) left at 8.20am. 6 hours in a railway station – we’ve had worse.

That night we slept on a metal bench just beside the track, saving money the backpacker way.

We woke up sweating like pigs. The sweatbox was too much for me so I moved rooms. James stayed put because he was too lazy to move his sheets.

The next morning, we haded out for a grand tour of the capital and saw the White House, Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, FBI building etc, etc. Most of them were under tight security, so we couldn’t get that close.

We saught air-conditioned refuge in the American History Museum. It was surprisingly unbiased and kept us amused and entertained for a few hours.

We heard that some sort of BBQ competition(!) was taking place downtown so we decided to take a look. It cost $7 just to get in, but the damn thing was just some stalls in the street. At the gate we were told you could get free food from the different BBQs, but this was a complete lie. They all charged! The only free things were peanuts. And even then we had to take the “Peanut Tour”. My head nearly fell off it was so damn interesting. Turned out to be the most expensive peanuts we have ever eaten – the whole place was a complete waste of money and everyone was trying to sell us something.

In a quest to save money we had a really minging Indian Takeaway and headed to bed beer-less. Now the fun really began…

Whilst I slept like a baby in my air-conditioned heaven (albeit for the noisy Chinese man who seemed intent on just climbing up and down his ladders all night), James had the following experience (in his words)…

The sweatbox was typically hot, even though the air conditioning (which was more like a hot blower) was on. Everybody was asleep so I slipped quietly on top of the sheets (it was too hot to sleep in them). Managed to doze off and on until about 2am.

After having a nightmare that I was burning alive I woke up in a sweat. The obvious reason for this nightmare was that the ’sweatbox’ had now turned in to the ’saunabox.’ Just try to imagine how hot it has to be too actually wake you up. I couldn’t understand it. The later it gets generally the colder it should be.

It soon became apparent that the source of the heat was the air conditioning which was kicking out hot air at an alarming rate. The old guy was just getting back in to bed. The old git had been at the controls! The previous history being that we had a slight disagreement about the danm air conditioning machine the day before after the controls kept being mysteriously set to “heat to 80F” rather as opposed to “cool”. It was blatantly the old man fiddling with the controls again. I was not a happy bunny.

The sounds in the room suggested that everybody else had woken up in the heat, but weren’t doing anything about it. After contemplating my reaction for a while I decided simply to get up, walk across the the air conditioning and set it back. I was too tired for anything else. As I started to get out of bed I heard a noise.

Now I don’t want to go in to too much detail about the noise, or what I subsequently saw, but sufficed to say that the old guy was jerking off. He was being pretty noisy about it too.

Rather that going to the air conditioning I went to my bags, collected my things and left the room at 3am, never to return. After discussions with the late night clerk I checked in to another room until morning.

I dread to think what happened to the other poor souls who stayed in the room with the mad old bastard – all I can say is that I hope that they got out alive and unaffected.