How We Spent Our Sandy Vacation

Amanda and I traveled to Florida last weekend to attend a memorial service for my grandmother. The service was very nice, and we were able to spend time with family I haven't seen in several years. In fact, Amanda even met my uncle Bill and aunt Donna for the first time!

What we didn't realize until Thursday night was that Hurricane Sandy was planning an east coast visit the same weekend. We arrived in Florida on-time Friday evening, after most of the wind and rain (just a few gusts and one crazy pour). Saturday was grey and cool, but otherwise fine weather. Sunday, we woke up to an even lighter sky … but also a phone message from JetBlue informing us that our return flight to Boston had been cancelled.

We packed up an drove toward the airport anyway, holding on the phone in a queue estimated to be, "longer than 60 minutes." Halfway to Orlando, we even had to pull over at a McDonalds to recharge Amanda's phone. But 90 minutes later, we had our answer: we were stuck in Florida until Wednesday morning. Sandy was due to turn inland, and no airline wanted their planes sitting on runways in the predicted path.

After several minutes of freaking out about things we were meant to do at work at the start of the week, we calmed and started making more phone calls. Remarkably, the Holiday Inn was not yet full of other travelers. Extending the rental car was equally easy. So, we had lodging, and means to get to food/laundry/etc.

Now … what to do with ourselves for two and a half days?

Harry Potter at Universal Studios (album link)

Aha! The Harry Potter exhibit at Universal Studios! We've heard about it, why not? A replica of Hogsmead, Hogwarts castle, the Hogwarts Express, butter beer (good, like cream soda), pumpkin juice (a bit too sweet), Cornish pasties (really hit the spot) … we had a ball. Wizards in robes singing with frogs, Olivanders wand shop, and the animated pictures … wow.

So that entertained us for the rest of Sunday. Monday we had to be practical: laundry (since we had packed for a light two days), and a bit of shopping. We were also able to contact college friends we hadn't seen in years, and meet them for dinner.

Tuesday was a bit of a looming hole. Would we just sit around and read? More shopping? Then I remembered some of the signs we had seen along the highway…

Kennedy Space Center (album link)

Two nerds… Florida… Kennedy Space Center. It was awesome. We saw the amazingly large Vehicle Assembly Building, where the load rockets onto the mobile platform before wheeling them out to the launch pad. We saw the launch pad where all of the moon-landing missions left the Earth. We saw a Saturn V rocket, which is huge - the length of a football field, nose-to-tail. We experienced a simulated shuttle liftoff. And, the big highlight, we saw the shuttle Atlantis up-close, as it was undergoing its final preparations before being moved to its new home inside a brand new building at the visitors complex.

To cap it all off, the trip home was smooth and on-time. Apart from a few sticks in the driveway, the house looks untouched. We're not even sure we lost power. Quite the relief, after watching all the pictures of New York and New Jersey stream across the televisions in the airport.

So that's how we spent our Sandy Vacation.

Be sure to follow the links to the albums - there are larger versions of the pictures, and more!