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Reflections While Watching A Captiva Island Sunset

August 2nd, 2011

Captiva Sunset

I’m on vacation with family and friends on Captiva Island in Florida, watching a Gulf of Mexico sunset, and it’s incredible!

As a younger version of myself, I’ve vacationed at Clearwater Beach in Florida, and even though it’s beautiful there too, now on Captiva Island, I’m watching the Gulf of Mexico sunset with a greater level of awareness and appreciation of the beauty of the event. For a second, my mind drifts and I wonder if sailors and pirates of an ancient time also watched such sunsets with the same level of wonderment as my family and friends are currently doing.

The beach is tiered so that it look almost like two massively long sand bar steps to the ocean. I sit on the layer that is only one step above the ocean by a few feet. The beach texture is course because of all the flakes from partial seashells lying around everywhere. It’s not the white pretty sands of Clearwater, but still pretty nice all the same.

I would like to say that it’s just my family and friends watching the sunset, but the beach has a fairly decent crowd all watching the same magical sunset. In many ways it reminds me of the New Year’s ball falling at midnight to start the new year. Surprisingly, the sun submerges below the horizon line in the far off distance quite quickly, much quicker than I anticipated. The sunset spectators at the beach clap and cheer as if they were applauding after the Fourth of July grand finale fireworks display.

The most notable features of the sunset is the way the golden colors from the sunset rays dance on the tops of tiny waves in a line directly from me to the sun doing down. I looks to the left and notice the dark tiny wave tops and think how cool the bright rays might looks as a contrast. It’s quite striking! The overall lighting is on the edge of twilight and I can now imagine how sailors could see manatees off in the distance and think that their silhouettes (especially young manatees) look like the outlining shapes of mermaids.

It’s funny how our minds drift while on vacation and we appreciate the simple events in life. I guess this is what they mean by the saying “Stop to smell the roses”…

Having fun,

MR

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Posted in Vacation

Tags: captiva captiva beach captiva island captiva sunset Gulf of Mexico island vacation ocean sunset watching an ocean sunset

A Sea World – Orlando Florida Vacation

July 30th, 2011

Instead of driving down to Hilton Head like we usually do, instead my wife and kids are going to go swimming with Dolphins at Discovery Cove and visit Sea World as a free option as part of the Discovery Cove package. Actually, the Discovery Cove includes 14 free days pass to Sea World.

If I we were to use all 14 days, it would have been a huge bargain, but we are only going to go to Sea World three days at the max instead of the 14 free days that are included. It was definitely worth it, my kids and wife talked about it all the way home!

I’ll save the Discovery Cove story for another day though, so now onto Sea World…

The primary attraction at Sea World is the Orcas, and they didn’t disappoint! The primary Killer Whale that did most of the stunts would bent it’s tail into a funnel. and get the entire lower level audience wet. I’ve never seen Killer Whales do that before, at least not to that range. All told there seem to be at least 5 Killer Whales in the show, but I expect there are even more than that.

I was mostly amazed by the Dolphins though! They are incredible intelligent animals, and borderline magical to watch. The Dolphin Show that we watch was more than just Dolphins jumping though! The entire act was borderline art! You could tell that they female trainers had some dancing and ballet skills! Then the bird show that was mixed in was amazing to watch too!

: Dolphins

All in all, it was a great experience that both kids enjoyed, but especially my daughter!

If you ever decide to swim with the Dolphins, my family highly recommends it.

Cheers,

MR

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Posted in Vacation

Tags: Day at Sea World Sea World Sea World experience Sea World Fun Sea World in Florida SeaWorld

Airport Terminal Restaurants Seems To Never Get It Right

July 29th, 2011

When we’re in the Orlando Airport terminal, we saw a “Macaroni Grill” restaurant and decided to stop in there for lunch.

We made our decision to go to Macaroni Grill because the one in out area burned down and we miss the bread that we use to get there.

So there we are with out 200 tons of luggage (or at least it seemed that way), trying to sit in the small airport terminal space that Macaroni Grill had in the airport terminal. I’m sure it was a funny sight.

The first thing we noticed that was different was that the menu was somewhat limited. The prices were normal, but kind of high for lunch.

When we got the food, I noticed that the portion size for my disk “Penney Rustica” was 1/2 the normal size that my local restaurant use to provide.

The bread that we got was cold and while it looked the the stuff we use to get at our local restaurant version, it tasted worse than wonder bread white bread. This was a huge let down.

Both kids didn’t like their food and so they only ate a little bit. I finished my plate, but didn’t feel well shortly afterwards.

The moral of the story is to not buy airport terminal food unless absolutely necessary.

I wonder if others have had similar experiences with airport terminal food?

Bests,

MR

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Posted in Vacation

Tags: airport food airport restaurant airport restaurant food Airport terminal restaurants why I hate airport food

Interesting Flight Experience On The Trip To Florida

July 27th, 2011

On my flight to Florida, my seating arrangements was very interesting this item and I thought I’d share my experience.

First, let me explain my seating arrangement. Since there are four of us, but only 3 connecting seats per side on the plane, I was the one that was voted off of the 3 connected seats side. So I was the inner aisle seat on the other side, sometimes banishment hurt (lol).

So since the plane was full (unlike my trip to California where I didn’t have anyone beside me), both the seats beside me were filled by other passengers.

Passenger 1: Young Boy

This kid was probably 8 or 9 and overall wasn’t too bad. He did play his Nintendo DS without turning down the volume, but even then it wasn’t too loud.

The only problem that he did have was when he went to the bathroom, he came back with pee all over the front of his shorts. I noticed but didn’t let him know that I did. He did try to conceal it with the airplane tray but I didn’t even act like I noticed. Luckily for him the other passenger (see below) was sleeping.

I felt bad for him, but luckily by the time the plane landed it was dry with faint staining, and not quite as noticeable.

Passenger 2: Mr. “I love boobies”.

Yep, that’s what this 20-ish man had on his wrist as a rubber bracket. Of course this guy had the window seat and even though a young boy would have appreciated looking out the window to see the view, this guy decided to put the blind down on his window and the one a bit in front of him, so the view wast completely black. Next he blows up a little pillow and put it against the window and immediately falls asleep.

Later when it was time to leave the plane, I notice that he even took both of his shoes off during the flight. Needless to say, I was glad I wasn’t the boy who was sitting between us, poor kid!

I don’t fly much, so little experiences like these are interesting and sometimes frustrating.

Cheers,

MR

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Posted in Vacation

Tags: bad flight experience embarrasing moments during flight trip to florida unusual passengers during flight

I Have Too Many Vacation Days, So I’m Taking A Blogging Vacation

July 27th, 2011

Oh No, I’m Losing Vacation Hours, Aughhhh!

I have too many vacation days accumulated! I bet you’re thinking, “What is his problem? Too many vacation days???”

Unfortunately, were I work once we accumulate over 200 hours, we don’t accumulate any more vacation hours. So additional hours accumulated would be lost! That’s like throwing away money, and I’m way, WAY to frugal to throw away money!

So I decided that instead of juggling days off, taking a day or two every other week, I would take two full weeks all at once. That will definitely tide me over until the end of the year!

Taking A Blogging Vacation

Yep, that’s right! I’m going to take my old black laptop and blog while I’m on vacation, at least when I can. Oh sure, the family doesn’t realize this yet, but if I’m quick about it, I should be able to do my blogging during the down times between our adventures that we will be having on vacation.

I’m going to be taking advantage of my son’s camera feature on his iPod touch, I hope he doesn’t mind (lol, like he has a choice)!

I’m sure in some ways I’ll play the role of a journalist checking out a new unexplored territory! A win for me will be the fact that I now have an excuse to take lots of pictures!