Under the Florida sun

Except for the road trip to New Orleans I haven't written anything about my travels since Cuba. But Morten and I have been back in the States for four weeks now. And it has been good! First of all, service! How great isn't it to get good service at restaurants, and stores, and stuff? The first encounter we had was at Alamo when we picked up our rental car in Miami. The man behind the counter was just so genuinely nice and helpful!
When we drove up to Kissimmee, just south of Orlando we drove thru a huge storm. And it was a lightning storm greater and more fascinating than any fireworks on either 4th of July or New Years! I had my face pushed up towards the windows to see it all! Amazing! But then the rain started hitting even harder, and it was difficult to see the other cars around us! We drove super slow, and had the emergency flash on, but it was kinda scary! Luckily we drove out of the storm. We've seen quite a lot of strong storms like that, but none of them have been serious. I can't even imagine how it must be to be caught in a serious one, a hurricane or something like that. And there have been a lot of them around Kansas and Texas this summer.

But what have we been up to? A bunch of stuff.... Morten and I have season passes to Universal Studios, so we've been there a couple of times. It is amazing how they have built their two theme parks! So much of the stuff I had in my Experience Economy class at CBS makes sense! Cool to see it and not at least, experience it! Morten is not that found of rollercoasters and stuff, and the lines have been so long that I haven't been bothered to stand there by my self. But we were supposed to try this one thing, it's called 'Jaws' and it's Oceaneering that have built it and in charge of maintenance, so we had to try it! And there was 1 hour waiting time for it... after 1/2 hour the stupid thing breaks down and we ended up going out of the line. Good job there Oceaneering! :p In Universal they also have a restaurant called Bubba Gump, which is based on the movie Forrest Gump, and their seafood is so good there! So we've been eating there every time we've been there. We also saw the third Ice Age movie there. That was probably my favorite one!
We have also been to another theme park called Sea World. It is easy to see that the tourist industry is struggling, even in Orlando, because, like many of the other theme parks the purchase of a one day ticket got us entry for the rest of the year. Bad for the industry, good for us Sea World was really fun! I love to see animals and to learn about them and this was a good park to do so. During the popular killer whale show with Shamu the trainers told us about how they train them and how their daily life is. In the Dolphin Cove you could get a closer look at the dolphins. They even had a shallow pool for small manta rays, here you could buy food for them and you were showed how to feed it to them and pet them. They were so slimy! And best of all they had several large sea turtles that all had been hurt in some way and were rescued and now lived good healthy lives! Some had scars, some were missing some loafers, poor guys!

What else have we done? Morten has been busy in the real estate business. In may he sold the house that we are staying in, but the paperwork has been taking so much time that the buyers haven't taken over the house yet. But it has been frustrating for him, because the company that is supposed to take care of it all is so slow! It takes them forever to fix everything with regards to taxes and stuff. Even more than a month after the process started they they come to Morten asking for details that they should have asked for initially. So that's been frustrating for him. In addition we have been looking at other houses for him to buy, which I have been enjoying! It's so much fun to go house-hunting! Especially with the amazing houses they have over here. Unfortunately for Morten, houses/condos with 3 bedrooms/2 bathrooms are not that common. And now that he knows the area better he is a bit more picky about location. So it might take some time.

When we've been here we've spent quite a lot of money on rental cars, so he's been looking at buying a car here. And they are crazy cheap over here! But then there was the insurance issue... He would have to pay at least 1200 dollars a year for insurance! But he was told that it would be cheaper if he had a US drivers license. So he made an appointment to get one. First he had to had to take a short test where he had to answer some questions before he was ready to take the practical test. A censor got into the passenger side of our rental and they drove off. Morten told me afterwards that the test was crazily easy! he had to drive on a short corse between some cones and show that he didn't hit them and could break and stuff. The teacher had actually asked him if he was a race car driver or a professional driver of some sort! Hahaha... But it is crazy that their test is not harder, it seems like they should have a bit more practice before the 16 year olds are let out alone in the car! Something they at least should teach them is that slower vehicles should drive to the right! Annoying! So Morten got his license and called various insurance companies again, but the price did not improve much! And the reason? He was put in the same category as a 16 year old that just got his license! And it did not help that he has had his Norwegian one for more than 13 years! We'll see what happens...

There is a lot of alligators here in Florida, and Morten likes to scare me with stories of them taking kids and dogs. He took me to Gatorland where I could look at them up close. Besides gators and crocks they had a lot of animals, everything from turtles, flamingos, snakes, sloths to a petting zoo. Morten made good friends with some of the goats there :p But we got to see gator wrestling and feeding. Good fun!

Besides this we have been doing a lot of stuff around the house. Been relaxing and sleeping in, getting a tan and working in the garden. I've been making a lot of wok with lots of delicious veggies! Even Morten loved it! he refused to believe it was healthy, because it tasted so good! Yeay on me!

I'm still way behind on uploading pictures on Facebook, but yesterday I uploaded more from Stephs and my road trip in Cali. But there's more to come!

Tomorrow I've got 1 week left! Shit! Not ready to leave yet!

xoxo