Week in Florida

Marissa, my family, and I went down to Florida to visit my great aunt and cousins.

Marissa and I got to stay at my cousins multi-million dollar house in Cocoa, FL! It is on a lagoon where dolphins and manatees swim up right in front of you, and it has heated pools and other fun things! The fireplace is an old, dead corral reef, they had someone dive and bring it up in small pieces!

The first thing we did was to go shopping at Ron Jon’s Surf Shop. My brothers just HAD to go. 🙂 They had tons of surf boards in there.

There was even a red model bi-plane!

Look Jonathan is a surf board!

We went over to Cocoa Beach Surf Company and they had a fish tank with sharks in it!

My brothers stumbled upon some Porsches, which happens to be my favorite type of car! My favorite would either be the 944 or Carrera GT. I took some pictures of the Cayman S.

I think it was smiling at me! 🙂 It actually looks similar to a Volkswagen Bug from this angle. Dr. Ferdinand Porsche is responsible for that. He actually designed the Bug! He also designed the German Tiger Tank. I actually wrote a paper on him back in high school. 🙂

The next day we went to the Central Florida Zoo. It was the first time Marissa and I had seen cheetahs in real life! Cheetahs are by far Marissa’s favorite animal. She wants to work with them someday, so it was very exciting! They have very awesome eyes! Plus they can run up to 80MPH and chirp instead of meow! They are also the only big cat that can purr. Other big cats make a low growl, similar, but the cheetah is the only one with the proper hyoid bone structure.

We went to Downtown Disney to hang out and have dinner at Planet Hollywood. I got the Fried Lasagna. It was yummy.

The Lego store was by far my favorite place there. The Lego sculptures were amazing! It’s Lego Nessie!

I’m a dork, but I just had to. RGB (Red+Green+Blue). He he 🙂

And a whole wall of Lego people!

Captain Morgan (x3)

Here is the awesome Florida sunset that Jonathan captured.

The next day, my parents gave us a surprise by sending us to Disney World! Marissa and I went to Animal Kingdom, while Jonathan and Christopher went to Universal Studios. Animal Kingdom was amazing.

At the ticket booth the lady gave us Just Married buttons even though we had been married for a while. It was neat because all of the Disney employees kept congratulating us and treated us special. 🙂

Each part of Animal Kingdom you felt like you were in a different country, from Africa and China to India because of the amazing environments they created, down to the smallest details. Here is some of India.

The Tree of Life was huge and was carved of all of the animals of the animal kingdom! That had to of taken a lot of planning and detailing.

There were animals through out the park and also a bunch on the safari ride in the jeep.

There was an awesome roller coaster ride, Expedition Everest, that took you through a mountain to a track that’s broken at the end, then backwards through the mountain to encounter the Yeti! I was holding tight to my camera as I went through. 🙂

There was an amazing view of Animal Kingdom from the top of the ride! You can see the Tree of Life rising above the tree line on the left. You can get an idea of just how huge the tree of life actually is!

The last day, Marissa and I went to the Jacksonville, FL Zoo.

There were more cheetahs at that zoo. We looked all over the zoo for them and right before the zoo was closing, we had to ask someone where they were. We apparently passed right by their exhibit at the beginning! They blended in so well to their surroundings (green grass)!

We also saw an Amur Leopard! There are only 35-45 remaining in the wild! If you want to help save wild animals like these, visit WWF (World Wildlife Fund).

Marissa got to feed a giraffe. Their tongues were around 20 inches long! There is no leaf they can’t reach…mostly.

This elephant was trying out for the next Jungle Book movie. 🙂

This one got a headache from all of the music and marching around.

There was also a Sting Ray Bay! I got to pet the sting rays. They felt like slimy rubber. I took some underwater pictures and videos of them.