Ok Ithought I had done this last week but is musn't have taken, so Ill try again!

Last weekend Aoife and I went to Orlando Florida for a little break from the extreme cold here in Chicago. We had of course chosen to take the 6 am flight because it was 10 dollars cheaper than the 9am flight, which meant a 4am start, definitely not my favourite time of the day! but it all went smoothly and we arrived at 10am in Florida to warmth and sunshine. I spent the day by the pool getting burnt and then Aoife and I went and played 36 holes of mini golf! It was great fun. We had a fantastic italian meal that night before heading to bed early.

On Friday we headed to Universal Islands of Adventure to take on all the roller coasters. It was fantastic. No line was longer than about 15 minutes so we were able to do all the rides more than once. We did the water rides and got soaked but were dry within the hour. That night we went out for my 21st to the Hard Rock Cafe where they sang happy birthday to me and we had an enormous dinner as well as iced cocktails before heading to the City Walk bars and enjoying some live music in the Universal bars.

On Saturday we had a fantastic day at Sea World. The animal shows were brilliant especially the dolphin one and the sea lion ones. We had a fabulous lunch in the shark encounter restaurant where you eat your dinner in a glass enclosed restaurant with sharks swimming around you! They had so many beautiful animals, including turtles, manatees and other sea animals that had been rescued. We also saw the Shamu show which is the one where the killer whales are performing and we were sitting right in the front row and got absolutely soaked! it was also very good, but very american and a little OTT with the patriotism and the presentations rather than the animals.

That night I went out to the Universal Mardi Gras parade. It was held inside universal studios and the floats were great really colorful and exciting with lots of people dressed up in bright colors, and I collected lots of beads. They had a band from the 80's called the go go's who were pretty good and played for a couple of hours after the parade.

On Sunday, our last day in Florida, I headed out early to go to Universal Studios. I did all the really cool rides including Jaws, the Mummy etc and i got to star in one of their fake movies called Disaster which was fun! The whole park is set up as different parts of the US and the different movies Universal have made over the years. It was really interesting to see it all laid out in one place. They had a lot of more 3-d rides than the roller coasters of islands of adventure.

However I had enough time to make a very quick dash around islands of adventure and do all the good rides again including getting the the front row of some of the bigger rides which makes them way more intense.

Then we were back on the plane to cold Chicago, where we were delayed an hour to begin with and then our bags were delayed another hour and the trains werent running so it was very early in the morning before we got back to the apartment.