homeward bound

Feb 17, 2011

We leave Orlando tomorrow evening. Our flight with Delta connects to a V-Australia flight in LA, but we’ve been told that we need to collect all our luggage in LA and check it all in for the second flight then. That sounds like fun…not!

Today was spent doing some last minute shopping, we went to two malls; the Mall at Millenia which really reminds me of Chadstone (that would be Dundrum shopping centre for Irish readers) and the Florida Mall. When we came home we continued the packing, weighing and rearranging of bags. The holiday has been great; the kids really enjoyed it. IrishMum and I love watching them have fun and we got some good stuff in the shops too. I like the roads here, although the driving here tends to be faster than in Australia (which is faster than Ireland), and they are quicker to cut lanes, or not let you into their lane. The choice of clothes in the shops is fantastic; I was able to find comfortable jeans in every shop we went into (except maybe Starbucks). The coffee was surprising not all that great. Starbucks is awful in Australia but it is one of the few places here where we liked the coffee (they just don’t have that cafe culture you take for granted in Melbourne or Dublin).

We saw loads of references to Paddy’s day here, it looks like a big deal here (probably even more so than in Dublin). The service we got in every shop took a bit of getting used to; they must drill it into their employees to say ‘have a nice day’ whenever they see a customer because almost every time we saw a shop assistant they were very quick to offer a ‘standardized greeting’ (except in one electronics shop where the guy seemed a little disgruntled to answer my questions as he needed to take out his earplugs…perhaps he was the owner or something).
So that’s mostly it for the holiday. I may post something tomorrow whilst on the trip home, or if not in a couple of days when we’ve arrived. We’re looking forward to getting home (not looking forward to all the flights though).