Holiday in Orlando

Friday 17th December 2010

The morning arrived, at last, for us to go on the long-awaited trip to Orlando to see our younger son Kelvin. Arrived at Changi at 4.00 am to catch to United Airlines flight to Hong Kong, Chicago and Orlando - a long 20 hour flight..........

The Chicago O'Hare Airport was nice and efficient - we made the connecting flight without any problem and arrived well on time - at 6.00 pm Orlando time ......

Kelvin met us at the airport, we collected our Hertz rental car and he led us to the Comfort Suites - a nice cosy hotel near where he is staying, next to the Waterford Lake Shopping Complex - a HUGE complex of supermarkets, boutiques, shops, restaurants, cinemas, etc ..........all very convenient for us .....

the room at Comfort Suites was big and comfortable - best yet, it came with daily breakfast......

We met and made friend with the resident cat - it will be waiting for us every so often by our car and we got to feeding it everyday.......

After a quick clean-up, we went for dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen

and then proceeded to see Kelvin's living quarters at the nearby 'Waterford Lakes Villas' condominium at Lexington Summit Street. It is a nice place in quite a nice estate - mum approved.

we got to see Kelvin's B.A. graduation certificate from Syracuse University

On Wednesday, we visited the University of Central Florida and met Dr. Richard Lapchick, the Director of the MBA Programme Kelvin is in and for whom he also works as Graduate Assistant.

After that, the days just flew by - we had great times dining at various good 'makan places' around UCF.......

- it was good to meet up with some of Kelvin's classmates over some of these meals .............

We managed to catch a couple of good movies - 'The Fighter' and 'True Grit' - great shows and highly recommended........

We also had the chance to visit the famous 'Kennedy Space Center' home of NASA , launch pad of man's first journey to the moon and all those Apollo space shuttle launches - interesting !

With all the great Theme Parks around, it doesn't seems right not to visit them - so, we decided to go visit at least one of them - Disney Animal Kingdom. Well, it was quite nicely set up - can put our Zoo and Night Safari to shame......but we had to give all the exciting roller-coaster rides a miss - guess we are really getting on in age..........

We love the Orlando open space and the weather - when it wasn't raining, that is.

But most of all, we love the shopping ! - for all the daily necessities ...........

for pharmaceuticals...........

for the all-important Redfen shampoos, conditioners, etc

and, of course, for the Coach handbags, shoes at the famous Orlando 'Premium Factory Outlets' at International Drive..........

we even stumbled upon a Liz Claiborne Clearance Sale..........

All too soon, it was December 25th and time to come home, we said our goodbye and made a promise to go back to Orlando next Christmas time..........

We had arranged for a one-night lay-over in Chicago on transit to Singapore to make sure we could catch our connecting flight. The weather reports were not encouraging - predicting delays all over the US airports -

And so, we left for Chicago one day early and checked into Hilton @ Chicago O'Hare Airport at 4.00 pm of December 25th. Thought we could go to Chicago Chinatown for a nice Chinese Christmas dinner - so, took the underground train to the city........

Along the way, as we journeyed more into the city, snow started falling and the streets became more and more deserted......so, we had to do an about-turn and aborted our trip to Chinatown and ended up having dinner at the hotel restaurant.

The next morning, we woke up to see that the whole place had turned snowy white - 6 inches of snow covered every open space outside - it was freezing cold and we were glad it was time to come home..........