5 weeks in the sun

Today we went to the mall after work to do some last minute shopping before heading home. Ate at Wendy's, something I've intended to do for a while since the one on the Lisburn road has closed. Then watched Southpark and Kingdom Hospital.

Southpark was funny as ever. They all went to see The Passion. Kingdom Hospital was dull as ever, and it seems the rest of its viewers agree. Since the two hour pilot was broadcast five weeks ago, the ratings have plummeted and ABC has moved it to a Thursday 9/8c timeslot. The move will essentially kill the show because that timeslot is already owned by CBS with CSI and NBC with The Apprentice. If anyone had bothered reading one of the scripts before throwing money and a primetime slot at the show, they may not have made the mistake of producing the series.

After more food than anyone could possibly eat at the Italian restaurant near the hotel, it was back to the cinema for The Ladykillers. It's a typical Cohen brothers film, which would have been enough to interest me five years ago but they can't just keep making the same sort of films over and over. It's getting tedious. It's not nearly as funny as the trailers make it out to be, although their films tend to contain very dry, dark humour rather than the laugh out loud comedy that the trailer implied.

It had its moments but they weren't frequent enough so the story dragged its heals a lot and by the time the end came I was glad to see the credits roll so I could leave. Still, it's great to see Bruce Campbell on the big screen, even if it is only a cameo appearance.

Ate in TGI Friday's and then went up to the Cinema for Scooby Doo 2. I didn't like the first one much and didn't enjoy this one any more. Again, the best thing about the film was Matthew Lillard, who plays Shaggy so well it's scary. Sara Michelle Gellar was just playing Buffy and Freddie Prinze Jr. was as annoying as ever. I had to do a double take of Linda Cardellini in one scene but she didn't bring anything else to the film. Even Seth Green looked like he didn't want to be there. As long as films like this get to No. 1, Hollywood will keep making them.

The trailer for Thunderbirds was shown and it looks like it's going to be worse than I thought.

I spent today in Naples Zoo. It's not a very big zoo so you could see everything in less than an hour. However, they put something on almost every half hour to keep you entertained. There are three shows during the day where they bring out animals and talk about them, letting you pet some of them at the end. They do talks near some of the exhibits like the lions and tigers and there's a boat trip around the islands where they keep the monkeys.

The Zoo was originally a botanical garden in 1919 and many parts are still reserved for plant-life only. The plant-life in Florida is alien enough but there are some fascinating trees with things that look like roots extending from the branches and into the ground. Other trees are covered in thorns and some are covered in what looks like dry, dead moss but is actually quite soft and still alive.

You can see the alligator lake live at the Naples News website.

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.