5 weeks in the sun

Today we went to the Everglades. I've always wanted to see the Everglades so I've been waiting for this since I arrived here. We started off with an airboat ride around the swamp, which began with us spending some time looking for Manatee. We caught a glimpse of a few but you only get brief glimpses of their nose or head pop out of the water. We were lucky to see a tail (and even luckier to photograph it). It doesn't look like much but they're such an endangered species that there may be a time in the near future where a nose or a tail will be impossible to see.

After that we took a high speed ride through the backwaters. The clamshell islands built by Native American tribes over 2000 years ago are thick with vegetation and trees with very strange root systems. I was expecting to see a lot more wildlife but we only saw one alligator during the ride. I think there are so many airboat rides in the area that all the sensible animals live somewhere else.

We went a little into Everglades City to get something to eat and then back to the 41 to find the road someone told us about. It runs along side a canal that's full of alligators. They just float in the water and sit on the banks sunning themselves. There wasn't much movement out of them because they mostly hunt at night. They're also in the middle of mating season so they're very territorial and just site there guarding whatever patch of swamp they call home.

We went to Fort Myers in the evening. Spring Break is all but over so it was a lot quieter than last time but anywhere is more exciting than Naples. We got some pretty bad food in The Beached Whale, had a few drinks in Lani Kai's and finished off in Hooters.

It was a pretty good day. It's strange knowing that this time next week I'll be on my way home.

We went to 5th Avenue and got food in a fairly up-market restaurant, followed by a few drinks in one of the Irish pubs. Then, after being refused entrance to a nightclub because they wouldn't accept our UK drivers licenses as ID, we ended up in a bar on Pine Ridge. It was completely dead so after just one drink we went back to the hotel. Not a particularly exciting Friday night.

Went up to Best Buy for a browse around. Some things were very cheap, like 42" plasma TVs for under $3000 (£1600). Other things were just the same price as they are at home.

The main reason I went there was to get some Xena and Hercules DVD box sets because an annoying thing happened with the US releases of the series. Anchor Bay have the DVD distribution rights here but Best Buy struck a deal with them where the DVDs they sell in their stores and on their website have extra bonus features that aren't available anywhere else. There are still plenty of features on the regular release. Just not ALL the features. However, the problem is that they don't ship outside the US so you can't order them from their on-line store. You can get the regular US release from other sites but they don't have the extra Best Buy features.

So, my suitcase is going to be weighed down with a load of DVD box sets now. It's a pity that Universal Playback have the UK distribution rights because they really are the last people you'd want to let near a show you like. They release any sort of rubbish on DVDs with bad picture, bad sound, no extras and, in most cases, random episodes from the show or episodes in the wrong order.

Hopefully their rights will expire soon and the UK branch of Anchor Bay will get a chance to release them.

Another run, some time in the gym and Chillies for Dinner. Then I watched Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital again. I didn't get to see it last week because of being out for St. Patrick's day but it doesn't look like I missed a great deal. It still runs at an unnecessarily slow pace and the characters are still uninteresting. If nothing else, it's an excellent study in how to do minimal plot development and negligible characterisation in an hour of TV.

Went for a run on the beach and then out to the Olive Garden for food. We also checked out the strangely located English bar in Naples. I'm not sure if a pint glass half filled with Strongbow and topped up with Guinness is a typical English drink but that's what some people were drinking.

Went to see Secret Window today. It wasn't too bad but for something that was supposed to keep you guessing and then finish with a big twist, it's an incredibly predictable film. I was sitting thinking that parts of it were a bit of a rip-off of The Shining and only afterwards I discovered that it was based on a Stephen King story. Ironic, since the story is about plagiarism. Can you plagiarise your own work?

We had to drop someone off at Orlando Airport for 3.30 so there was no time to do any parks today. After breakfast at an International House Of Pancakes we went to the Florida Mall. It's one of the biggest Malls in Florida with over 260 stores covering almost 2 million square feet of shopping space. Unfortunately 90% of the shops were clothes shops and I wasn't in the mood for clothes shopping. In fact, I'm never in the mood for clothes shopping.

In a corner of the mall there was a guy playing an electric harp. I was half listening to him when he caught my attention by playing I Dreamed A Dream, one of my favourite pieces from Les Miserables. After buying one of his CDs I got chatting to him and it turned out he was English. He moved to Florida from West Sussex a few years ago.

Have a look at his website at www.rupertparker.com. You can even buy some of his CDs if you're interested. I would have bought more if I had more cash with me.

We left Orlando about 3:30 and were home five hours later. We stopped in Lake Placid for something to eat. I was hoping to get some good pictures from the top of their tower but it was closed on Sundays.

This electricity pylon is the first and last thing you'll see entering and leaving Orlando and it's what the city is all about.