Florida Days #0-1: Travel & Acclimatizing

2019-02-19Friends, Us, USA Standard

[Photos taken on 19 – 20 February 2019, posted online 05 August 2019. We’ve spent the long weekend in Finnur’s parents’ summer house. The weather is amazing. Yay, climate change!]

Sometime last year, our friends Adda and Halli approached us with the idea to go visit Orlando, Florida, with them before the kids got ‘too old’. Since we’d managed to not visit Disneyland while we lived in California, we said yes. We decided to go during the two-day long school February winter-break, as the weather would be most tolerable.

As it happened, our flight to Florida got changed TWICE by Icelandair, so we ended up going out a day earlier than planned. (35-ish images total.)

Tuesday 19 February 2019

About to land in Orlando, erm, in an hour or so. It was an 8-hour long flight.
Rewinding a few hours, this is what the parking lot at Keflavik airport looked like.
Walking selfie at Keflavik airport.
We found our fellow travelers by one of the cafes.
Dancing with excitement!
Embarking time.
Unusually for flights to America, this one was packed with Icelanders.
Goodbye snow.
Some passengers are lucky enough to be able to sleep lying down.
Waiting for our turn at the car rental booth.
We drove for about 45 minutes to our airbnb, which was quite welcoming.
Needless to say, these decorations were quickly put away, and did not resurface for the remainder of our stay!
Sofa area. These were quite comfy.
One of the two master bedrooms. There were five bedrooms in total!
The ridiculously large attached bathroom.
One kid down!

Wednesday 20 February 2019

The day began by a guy arriving to fix the pool.
Our airbnb was in a typical McMansion area, i.e. very large houses with almost no space between them.
I was left in charge of the three youngest kids as the remainder of the group drove a ways away to buy groceries at Costco and Whole Foods. We took it easy until it was time to find something to eat for lunch. Our first stop though was the “Club House” of our complex. It was far enough away that we decided to drive there.
We found an arcade inside.
I was getting hungry so I didn’t let them play.
There was also a large swimming pool. Since we had our own, we never used this one.
We found a small playground to the side. It was very typical.
Running around! (Animated gif, wait for it to load.)
13 minutes after we’d arrived, we took off in search of food.
We ended up in one of those “make your own lunch” with a salad bar etc.
Emma didn’t like much of it, except the self-serve ice-cream.
Bjarki in dessert heaven!
We hopped into the Target next door, to buy hats.
Hats and sunglasses, check!
After eating and shopping we went back and tried to enjoy a little peace and quiet by the pool, but the siblings were’t feeling like sharing and caring very much so it was a bit hit and miss!
Temporary peace and floating going on! The cages around the pools in the area are probably mostly to keep the lizards out, and the occasional fly. (I was a little alarmed by just how few flies were around. This whole area is a marsh after all!)
Action in the next cage.
Meanwhile, an hour away…
Oh, the joys of traffic in the USA.