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These photos are from a month long trip to Florida and a two-week Caribbean cruise most of May of 2012 as a graduation and farewell gift for my German friend Annea as she prepared to return home to Stuttgart, Germany to begin working on her Doctorate. She had never seen the ocean and tropics before. In November, she would return to the area on her honeymoon. I will try to stay with the nature theme along with adding a few general photos of interest. Sunrise and sunset photos from the trip are posted at the end of the discussion "The Glory of Scenery touched by our God".

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Trip dates: May 5th to May 30th
packing 5th, left & stayed Columbus, Ohio overnight for early jump to interstate south
8th  arrived Tampa/Clearwater/ St. Petersburg metro area: gave Annea a quick tour of Clearwater, Venice, Caspersen, Crystal Beaches, Dunedin, Tarpon Springs and lastly Ybor  ("Gay Bar") City nightlife
Epcot and Magic Kingdom, Orland, 9th
Sea World, 10th
Bush Gardens, 11th; afterwards drove to Ft. Lauderdale port for hotel for morning Cruise loading and departure at noon 12th
West Caribbean was first, it went to: Labadee, Haiti 13th
Falmouth, Jamaica 14 & 15th(sunrise)
Cozumel, Mexico 17th (sunset dock) 18th left
restock ship at Ft. Lauderdale 19th-depart 5pm  (Annea wanted to go back to Capersen Beach for more shark teeth & shells) while we waited half a day
East Caribbean was: Nassau, Bahamas
21st Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas 23rd
Philipsburg, St. Maarten 25th
Port Ft. Lauderdale port 26 revisited several beaches, half a day at Oldsmar Flea Market 27th
start drive back 28th
home 30th

I paid for the entire trip by selling various herbs especially ginseng to a Chinese pharmaceutical company along with a commissioned Sapphire & diamond claddagh ring.

Disney and Epcot Center, Orlando
  Well almost a required stop for those coming to Florida; The Magic Kingdom is mostly designed for under 12 and Epcot Center is more educational for adults. Both expensive, parking is $30. Not much nature, to my tastes way too artificial, plastic and commercial. Still, one of the most popular of Florida's theme parks. Having gone once back in my Florida art years, I knew it was wise to get there early (like before sunrise) before the crowds arrive.  Just posting a few photos, although Annea in charge of the camera took hundreds. 

Map of the Park complex. By about 9am, waiting time to get into exhibits or a ride can take up to an hour. For adults, you need a full day to see most of everything, with children, I'd figure 1 day per child (which is why they offer 3 and 7 day tickets). The park is huge, and almost spotless with so many workers just picking up the slightest bit of trash.

Hall of Presidents, one of the earliest use of anatomic robots, mechanical copies of them stand up and give parts of their famous speeches.

Cinderella's Castle: Annea said if I ever build another log cabin it should look like this: she promised she would keep it clean. A long way from her first visit to the cabin and telling me: "I don't cook or do housework". Well, by this time she had begun to prefer sundresses to Gothic black leather and a nice tan over pale white skin and become quite the Suzi homemaker, although clothes were optional in her doing housework. A distraction I learned to deal with trying to get art and my studies done.

One of the colorful streets at night, still big crowds until midnight.

Since Annea had spent 3 years as a early teen street person, 3 more years in a Catholic girl's shelter and 4 years of undergrad college food, she had a fascination and passion for non-institutional food: 10% of the photos she took were of our meals, especially seafood, since her idea of seafood was fish sticks. When you take the tram between Epcot and Magic Kingdom is an area of better quality restaurants: she picked Ohanas Kitchen, a Polynesian Restaurant: it was a very good choice! Meat of all types cooked over wood fires. Here's the pork and beef shiskabobs

And the chicken. Five steps into the restaurant Annea stopped, looked at me and said: "Oh, this is nice, meat, lots of it: what is everyone else going to eat"? She was such a finicky eater when we first met, I corrupted her terribly. Luckily she was got lots of exercise keeping up with my frantic life.

Okay, one more Ohanas, one of the best restaurants ever.  These are just the appetizers at Ohanas!

Midnight fireworks display. You know a fireworks show is awesome when it looks like this from 2 miles away! After this, back to the hotel in Orlando to rest up for the next day. Annea didn't know I had another Orlando theme park planned.

SeaWorld, Orlando
 
Annea had seen the ocean twice in her life, once at 7 on a family trip to France, and then at 26 flying from Germany to the States.  And sea creatures she had only seen in books and television. So morning the 10th off we went for the drive to Sea World. She thought we were going back to East Florida and squealed when she saw this sign and gave me a big hug. Well, I had to pull to side of road because it was a very, very nice hug and needed my full attention.

Sea World besides having static exhibits has live shows throughout the day, here is a photo of the Sea Lion and Sea Otter pirate show.

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