Over pacing break, I flew down to Florida with two of my international friends, Delia and Gui, to escape the looming winter and spend some time in the sun. Our main reason for choosing Florida was to go to Disney World, so I thought I'd split my trip into two posts, one for Disney and one for the rest of our weekend.
As the flights and Disney tickets were so expensive, everything else had to be as cheap as humanly possible! We stayed in a motel room on West Irlo Memorial Highway that cost $30 a night (£19.37) conveniently situated opposite a bus stop and next to a big Dollar Tree store. Luckily we had a microwave in our room so we survived on $1 pasta ready meals and various snacks. And I finally found american chocolate that I actually liked, reese's peanut butter cups!
We arrived on Saturday afternoon and decided to just take an Uber to our motel instead of the ridiculously long and complicated bus route. In hindsight, I think we probably should have just taken the bus, because once we got to our motel we were pretty much stranded, whereas if we had taken the bus we could have stopped in Orlando and seen the city. But we were tired and we would have had to take a taxi to the bus station anyway, so we drove direct to our motel.
Our motel was basically in the middle of nowhere on the side of the highway next to a million other motels, so after eating our Dollar Tree finds, we took a $2 bus to Kissimmee to see what was there.
And it turns out that there wasn't a whole lot! But there is a beautiful lake that we wandered around, taking pictures and talking. It was just nice to be outside without a jacket on without work to do! There was also a Latino festival by the lake with live music and it was lovely to walk around the lake and see little old couples dancing together. It was a chilled start to our little holiday, and a stark change from the Pennsylvanian landscape!
On Sunday we went to Disney (post to come shortly!), and then on Monday we planned originally to get the bus to Orlando and explore. However, the long, long day at Disney meant that we were ridiculously tired, so we got up for the free breakfast at our motel, and then went back to bed until around midday! We were really hungry when we woke up, so we went and got more ready meals and chocolate and ate in our room. By the time we looked up buses, we realised that it wouldn't be worth the two hour journey each way to Orlando. Instead, we took our time getting ready and then took the bus back to Kissimme again and sat by the lake.
I think that there is a lot of pressure when you travel to do a lot, to have a lot of stories, to see a lot of things, but what we really need on this trip was a break. We have worked non stop since the middle of August and we had deadlines and exams both the week before and the week after Florida.
We sat in the shade and ate m&m's and chatted about our lives back home and at Lehigh, we watched all different types of birds flying and swimming around the lake, we saw an alligator and chatted to the park warden about the wildlife in the area. We sat on a bench and watched the sunset. It was more than enough, and the perfect respite before diving back into essays and reading.
Sometimes a good friend and the sunshine are all that you need.
