Joel's Birthday Trip

Well, we didn't do a very good job of taking pictures on this trip...and Joel always wanted to be behind the camera, so most of these pics are of me...

We started our trip off on Thursday, Mar 20th. Joel had decided that he wanted to drive most of the way that night, so we did and stopped off in Gainesville, FL for the night. Up bright and early, we made a stop and Starbucks and were on the road. First stop was the new water park,
Aquatica. It was surprisingly crowded for March. We weren't planning to spend too much time there, but we did ride two of the slides, took a few laps around the lazy river and spent some time in the wave pool. It was a little on the chilly side, but much warmer than here in GA. After that we checked into our hotel, cleaned up and got ready to go to Sea World.

At our hotel before leaving for Sea World

Sea World is my FAVORITE! We didn't see everything, but we did have a nice afternoon at the park. Many things had changed since we were there on our honeymoon almost 4 years ago. We saw the Clydesdales, the shark exhibit, the dolphin show and the night Shamu show.

Me and the penguin that Joel won for me

Getting our souvenir penny at Sea World

We had a late night dinner of Panda Express in our hotel room--it was great!

On Saturday we set out to Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. We were very glad we had gone to the water park on Friday, because Saturday was much more overcast and had intermittent showers.

We liked Universal Studios much more than Islands of Adventure. Our favorite rides were the Mummy coaster and the Men In Black ride--you get to shoot the aliens! We both really liked the Spiderman ride at Islands of Adventure, too. I'm sure we'll go back one day...if for nothing else than The Simpsons Ride. We were pretty tired--we had spent over an hour in line for one attraction that was less than impressive--so we called it a day rather early, but had dinner at Universal's City Walk before heading back to the hotel. We tried Pat O' Briens, which is a New Orleans style restaurant with dueling pianos. So we requested some songs and sang along as we ate our meals. We had beignets for dessert, which were really yummy. We did, however, get powdered sugar all over ourselves...just like one of our first dates when we shared a funnel cake at the NC State Fair.

So, all in all, I think Joel enjoyed his birthday trip. It was certainly a wakeup call that we needed to get in shape for our Yosemite trip. Both of us were so sore and tired from being on our feet all day!