So we’ve finally arrived in Florida — in fact, we’re already here since a week.

We arrived on Monday, 26-SEP, on Orlando Intl. Airport. After we had passed the Immigration service, we went to Alamo to pick up our rental car. As usual, I had reserved a “full size” car. Last time we received a Jeep Grand Cherokee instead, because they didn’t have any “full size” cars available then. But this time it seemed we were unlucky, because they had lots of full size cars available. But they all seemed very smallish. So I went to some Alamo associates and asked whether they could give me a larger car for the same price. And the friendly lady just said, “Sure, Sir, just pick one of the minivans over there.” And this I did… 🙂

The Pontiac SV6 I picked is just awesome — it even has a DVD player and entertainment system built into it. It has three lines of seats, with the rear line easy to be flipped down so that we had lots of space for our suit cases.

From the airport we drove to my grand-cousin Brigitte and her husband, Lyle. They have a very nice house in Riverview, Hillsborough County. Brigitte and Lyle and their pets welcomed us, and we talked for a while before we went to bed.

On the next day, Tuesday, we went shopping with Brigitte to the MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. We had already been there a couple of times, so it wasn’t that spectacular anymore for us.

On Friday, we went to Busch Gardens, a large tourist attraction in Tampa. We did all the rollercoasters, most of them even twice or three times. From the descriptions on Busch Gardens’ website, Sheikra with its two 90 degrees “dives” seemed the most spectacular rollercoaster. But we liked the one called “Scorpion” the most.

Today, Tuesday, 04-OCT, we were to Anna Maria Island (see it on Google Earth) to take a swim in the sea. Altho the weather could have been better, it was a great trip.

Tomorrow, we’ll head for Orlando. We have reserved a villa in Kissimmee, in a resort called Fantasy World Club Villas. We’ll stay there for three days to visit SeaWorld and the Disney-MGM-Studios.

On Saturday, we’ll invite our hosts to the local Bonefish Grill in Brandon. We had already been there on our last stay in Florida, and enjoyed it very much.

If you are curious about what we spotted on our trips, have a look at my picture gallery.