Peter's Japan blog

We got up early, checked out the hotel and took our car to the Alamo rental station, where we got on a shuttle bus to the airport terminal. First we had a short flight to Atlanta, where we had a connecting flight of 9 hours to Brussels. We arrived early in the morning at 8h30 on Sunday. Belgium is still quite different from the US, but we are glad to be back after 3 weeks in the US ;p Back to normal life :)

Quite a long ride today to the farthest point South in the USA that is reachable by car: Key West. It is reached over many bridges between the small islands of the Keys. It was a long drive but it had very beautiful scenery. But at Key West itself it was pretty hot weather.

It was our last in the US, so we had to pack our bags and get every we bought in our suitcase and hopefully get it safely back to Belgium ;p

Our last National Park on this trip, the Everglades. The Everglades are very large, and is actually a huge almost dry river bed. It features many animals like alligators, herons, turtles, etc.
Our first stop was at an alligator farm which also had those boat rides in those hovercraft boats with the big propeller on it which "fly" over the grass. We got to experience some 360's on it as well, which was fun ;p. The alligator farm also had an alligator feeding show and a snake show. Those hovercraft boats are not allowed inside the park btw.
After this we went to the park and got on the last ride through the park. We got to see many alligators again, right next to our open bus. Many beautiful birds and even some turtles.

In the evening we went to eat something at a nearby mall and to have a beer at a Hooters bar ;p.

Today we drove to Miami, in particular, Miami Beach, where we stayed at the Hotel Marseilles. It has small pool but was right at the beach and had a small sand garden with palm trees and hammocks. We stayed some time on the beach and went to drink a cocktail in the evening.

Today we went to SeaWorld. SeaWorld is like a zoo combined with a family park. It's many water animals and live shows with animals but also has some theme park features like roller coasters and the likes. They had two wonderful shows with dolphins and killer whales. And a funny pirate show with sea otters and a Cirque du Soleil show.
The roller coaster here, "The Kraken", was quite fast. I went on it thinking it wouldn't be so rough by looking at it, but it must have been the fastest one I've been on. I looked it up afterwards and the Kraken has an acceleration of 3.9G !!
Anyway, we had a great time although it was very hot weather.

It was an hour drive eastward, to Kennedy Space Center, also known as Cape Canaveral or just The Cape. It's located on an long-stretched island that sticks out of Florida. Although the space center is located here, it is also a natural park with even endangered species. But because the whole is off limits, nature can just go its way.
Anyway, we drove up to the visitor center and got on the tour bus, which took us for a drive by the VAB, Vehicle Assembly Building, one of the largest buildings in the world when talking about space. This is were the space shuttle is attached to the huge fuel tank and the boosters. After which they are taken to launch pad 39A or 39B using the Crawler, a huge vehicle that moves very slow. Our first stop was at the Launch Pad 39 observation gantry, which was the closest we were allowed. The space shuttle was actually on the launch pad, but the launch pad had its back to us, but we could see the big fuel tank on the top. There was also a real single engine from the space shuttle on display.
After this we got on the bus to the next stop, which was the Apollo-Saturn V center. It has a huge hall which has a life-size restored Saturn V launch rocket, and man, it's BIG! It has two theaters: one has a retelling of the Apollo 11 story and the other the reliving of a Apollo-era firing room. And of course, several real used items. After having something to eat here, we got on the bus again to the next stop at the ISS center, where there are several old parts on display and a real disassembly hall of the iSS. After this it's back to the visitor center, where there were some more attractions, like a 3D IMAX movie about the ISS, a space shuttle launch simulator, the first space shuttle Destiny which you can walk into and the Rocket Garden.
Kennedy Space Center was a lot better than we anticipated, it's a must visit if you go to visit Florida. It was very interesting to see all this.

Today was our last very long drive, 6 hours to Orlando. It was very warm when we arrived in Orlando and to our surprise, our hotel had been bought by another hotel chain ;p. It originally was a Best Western, but now it was an EconoLodge hotel ;p. But the reservations were still in order so that was okay. Sam and Tim went to the pool of the hotel and me and Nick were going to check some shops. I wanted to check a certain comic shop to look for anime/manga, but I found more at the big mall which was opposite of that shop. You can read more about it in my other post about "Finding anime in Orlando".
Went back to eat something at UNO Chicago Grill which was very good. After that we went back to the hotel and played some poker with a pile of 1 cents ;p.

Today we are leaving our lovely chalet behind and had a 6 hour drive to Atlanta. We're actually just passing through as we're only staying here for one night. We arrived in the early afternoon and decided to go visit the Coca-Cola Museum. Coca-cola originated from Atlanta, hence the museum.
It was quite interesting: they had a theater, a 3d theater, a small real coca-cola factory, an exhibition about the coca-cola company, coca-cola in art and a tasting room where you could taste all of the different drinks that the Coca-Cola company distributed around the world. It was divided between all 5 continents. You could taste as much as you like but not every drink was as good as the other. Some even tasted disgusting like I was drinking water with an asperine. But some were very good. We also got to take home a freshly made coca-cola bottle from the small factory as a souvenir. And the exit is of course through the museum shop with loads and loads of merchandise.

I wasn't feeling too well today and we had a long hike ahead of us, so I stayed at the chalet and do a bit of the laundry, washing up and putting out the garbage. The other three went on a 5 mile hike called "Alum Cave Trail" which took them to quite high ground.

I was in Orlando on my last trip to America and was looking to buy some anime-related things. I did a google search to find some shops and found a forum where they talked about a shop near Florida Mall called Bad Apple Comics. It's actually an American comics shop but also carried some manga. So I went to check it out and actually found out they had practically nothing: no manga, just a few figures in a corner. Bad luck... but we were going to Florida Mall on the other side of the road anyway and there I found much more. There is a music/dvd shop there called F.Y.E., it's a big chain. It's a big store and at the back of the store there is quite a large section of anime dvd, even manga, some t-shirts and even some Japanese candy ;p. Bought my last 2 dvd boxes I needed to complete my Haruhi dvds. (will make post later of the contents of the limited editions)

There was also another interesting shop in Florida Mall called Japan HQ. It's full of Japanese stuff like Hello Kitty, other cute stuff, figures and even gunpla kits. Not really anime dvds, but it's a nice shop. They also have a website which tells that they are a Florida based company with one other shop in the Orlando area.

So if you have some anime or japan needs in Orlando, these shops are what you need.

Today we have another long ride to the Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. 4 hours of driving and 4 hours back on one day. When we arrived there just after noon we were surprised to see that Kentucky has 2 time zones and that the Mammoth Cave was in another time zone ;p (we're really going to extremes on this trip ;p)
The Mammoth Cave is the biggest cave system in the world with 260 miles of charted tunnels and there are probably many more. We did a 2 hour tour through a small part of the caves. It was through the New Entrance which was blasted through the rocks and is about 300 steps down into the ground and you sometimes have to duck of squeeze through the rocks. But once you're down it's quite enough room to walk. We had a very nice and knowledgeable guide who told lots of interesting things about Mammoth Cave. At one stop, he asked us if we wanted to experience complete darkness. We were sitting on benches and he turned off the lights and it was utterly pitch black and not a sound to be heard. It's a weird feeling being surrounded by complete darkness and silence. You can't even see your hand if you held it an inch from your eyes.
He turned the lights back on and we went further. At the end we got to see some stalactites and stalagmites which were quite nice. We went out at another entrance, we didn't have to go all those stairs up again.
After this we went back to the chalet.

We woke up in our chalet and saw a wonderful view when we looked outside the windows. Now we could also see how our surroundings looked like. Many trees and a few neighbors, but the whole hill was covered with vacation houses. Our chalet was completely made out of wood and had some traditional decoration.

I didn't want to do a exhausting hike (like those from 2 years ago) so we took a short one at the other end of the national park called "Abrams Falls Trail". We had to drive quite some time through the park so we had a good look at it. We stopped a few times because other people also had stopped because they had seen something interesting like bears and deer.
We got to the trail and started doing it. But I guess I didn't sleep much and was tired and didn't go all the way and went back to the car before the others. Afterwards I heard the end was just 15 minutes away to the waterfall.
Went back to do some shopping as we had to make our own food now and returned to the chalet.

Today will be our longest trip by car being about 10 hours to drive from Washington DC to our private chalet near the Smokey Mountains. While doing this long trip we drove through our first National Park of this trip, Shenandoah National park. This national park is excellent for driving through as it is a long stretched park with a scenic route that goes through the whole park and it's in the direction that we are going so it's perfect. The winding Skyway route goes through Shenandoah and the shows all the beautiful vistas of the park. I think all the green hills remind me a bit of Europe actually.

We arrived pretty late in Pigeon Forge and had to go to checkin first at the office of the chalet rentals, but as it was almost 22h it was closed. And it was dark and we didn't find the office at first, but we finally found it and I went up to the door, which was obviously closed, but there was a small wooden box next to the door with a door and a sign on it that said "Late arrivals". I opened the door and there was one letter in it that had my name on it ;p Inside the letter were the entrance codes and a description to get to the chalet.
Now we had to find it in the dark and on some very steep roads into the mountains. But we finally found it and it looked awesome! It had a fully installed kitchen with fridge, oven, microwave, blender, dish washer, toaster, mixer, glasses, cups, etc. Next to that there were 2 large bedrooms and a game room with a pool table, air hockey table and even an arcade game machine. The game room also had a bed in it. The large bedroom downstairs had a jacuzzi, there was a hot tub outside on the balcony (which had a terrific view as we would see the next morning). There were also two bath rooms and a washing/drying machine, and not to forget the big screen tv ;p We quickly unloaded our luggage and went to bed as it was getting quite late.

In the morning we went back to the Washington Memorial for the free tickets to get up. It's a good view from up there. It's a large obelisk-type of building. It's not a real Egyptian as it is modern made, and much too large for a real obelisk.

We wanted to do the museum of American History but that was closed due to renovation, so we visited the next museum: the Museum of Natural History. And also the National Archives and the Museum of Indian Americans.

Pictures and a bit more detailed story to follow later ;p

Took our trip to Washington DC, but arrived around noon so we did a small part of the Mall. The Washington Monument, the White House, Lincoln Memorial, Arlington Cemetary and Jefferson Memorial (everything west of the Washington Monument). We couldnt go up the Washington Monument, as all the free tickets for that day were given away, so we'll come back tomorrow morning.

There are pictures for day 3, have a look :)

We dropped off Nick at Six Flags Magic Mountain and went back to Philadelphia to check out the historic center. This is the birthplace of the United States of America where the Declaration of Independence was written and signed and has many old restored buildings.

But first we visited the location of a memorable movie scene from Rocky: The Rocky Steps. These are the stairs where he runs to the top and puts his hands in the air. This as filmed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I ran up the stairs, like many other people there, but Tim didn't because his knee hurt, but he did put up his arms at the top (of which I took a picture). This has really become an icon and you see many people doing the same thing.
At the bottom of the stairs on the side there is also a statue of Rocky.

After this we went to visit the historical center, but that's for the next post.

Today we went back to the States, our first real long ride, about 6+ hours. Therefore, we arrived quite late in Philadelphia, so we just had a quick look at the nearest district and had something to eat. We will visit the historic center tomorrow.

Today we went to have a visit to Toronto, about an hour drive into Canada. It has a few large shopping centers and also the Hockey Hall of Fame, the Rogers Center, and the CN Tower. The CN Tower is still the largest tower in the world at 553m. We didn't go up, but it was a nice surprise as I was not sure this was the largest tower in the world.
We went back to Niagara, for a night view at the Falls as they are illuminated by many colored lights when it's dark. It's really beautiful to see, but it was freaking cold at the same time ;p We got many good pictures (which you will see later ;p).

Early out of bed to take the airport taxi back to the airport. Our clock timer just went off at 5h30 and 15 minutes later the phone rang that our Jamaican taxi driver had already arrive (45 minutes early ;p). So we were in a kind of rush to get ready. We got good on time at the airport. We had a short flight to Buffalo on the smallest plane I've ever been on. It had just about 100 passengers with a seat layout of only 1-2 (1 seat, corridor, 2 seats). It was just a short smooth flight of 50 minutes though.
We got our baggage and went to the Alamo desk to get our car. We didn't get the free upgrade to an SUV, so we asked for an upgrade and got our SUV. But man, when we went to the garage to get the car, were we surprised ;p. We got a gray full-size SUV, a brand new Dodge Durango, with enough room to fit 6 people ;p Enough room for our luggage, and it's even bigger than the one we had last time ;p
We had a short trip to Niagara Falls passing the Canadian border to our hotel close to the Falls. After check-in we went to put our luggage in the room where we found a jacuzzi right in our room :D Apparently, every room has a jacuzzi in this hotel (the Clarion President).

After that,we went to have a look at the Niagara Falls. It really is a great view from the Canadian side. There are two water falls: the Horseshoe Falls (the largest one on the Canadian side) and the smaller Falls (which is less spectacular on the US side).

It takes quite some time to walk through Central Park as it is quite big. After just a few minutes you don't really have the feeling you are in a big city full of skyscrapers. It even has a zoo and a big lake (and several small ones). We went to check out the famous Strawberry Fields with the Imagine stone pattern on the ground in memory of John Lennon.
After walking a bit more, we went to take a bite and back to the hotel.