Today I’m going to re-cap my first day in Florida which was last Wednesday. While I was there for the Zumba Convention, it didn’t start for us until Friday so we had Wednesday and Thursday free to do whatever we wanted – and clearly, we wanted to shop!
But let’s first back up a little bit…
Our flight out of Halifax was leaving early Wednesday morning so we had to leave my house at 2:30 am to get there in time to go through security, customs, etc. For me, sleeping only an hour or two is worse than no sleep at all – so I opted not to sleep. Here we are in Halifax ready to start our journey
We had a short stop over at JFK where I paid a crazy amount of money for some yogurt and granola and a bottle of juice, and then we were Orlando bound! The flight to Orlando was quite uneventful, but we were seated next to the engines and it was SOO loud the whole flight. Our ears were killing us on the decent and it was a good hour or two before we could hear decently. No amount of gum chewing was assisting us on that one!
Loss of hearing aside – we made it! Neither Holly nor myself had ever been to Florida before so we were pretty excited! Because we didn’t know where anything was I opted for the “meet and greet” service with our shuttle – we had a guy waiting with a sign with my name on it to get us all straightened out when we landed. Let me tell ya, that guy was worth every one of the $18 he cost. He took us right to baggage claim, got our shuttle tickets for us, took us to the shuttle, the whole works. Another time we probably wouldn’t need to do that but for our first time we were glad we did!
you can’t read it but the one on the left has my name on it
the “we’re in Florida” crazy look
After dropping other folks off at the Ritz Carlton, and a few other hotels we made it to our destination – the Hilton Grand Suites at Sea World and checked into our room.
please note this is the only time this room looked this good. We were, in short, a pair of slobs.
After we got settled in, we decided to go register for the convention so that would be out-of-the-way. It didn’t seem like the convention center was very far from our hotel when we drove there so we thought we’d walk. We walked for I’d say 40 minutes or more when we came across a gas station. We were thirsty and wanted a drink, plus we wanted to make sure we were going the right way so we went inside. Well we were in fact NOT going the right way, we actually were going the complete opposite direction and were now 5 miles away from the convention centre :S the folks at the gas station asked us three or four times if we were walking and really seemed shocked that we were even alive after finding out where we had walked from. We were looking pretty ratty by then, all sweaty and gross, and the gas attendant practically insisted we get on the bus. Since we weren’t really keen on the idea of walking 5 miles off we trudged to the nearest bus stop – right in front of a swap, and on top of a huge ant hill. Lovely.
Thankfully we got on the bus and only a stop or two later another Zumba person got on (we tend to carry bags with Zumba written all over them so we’re easy to spot 
) and he helped us get to the convention centre. He didn’t know where to go either but he had a friend on the phone that was there telling us where to go. Eventually we got there, got registered and were good to go!
Clearly my hairspray was failing at this point.
After registering we had heard the Zumba shop was going to be opening soon so we went to see how long the line-up was to see if we wanted to wait and go in.
See the purple sign WAAAY up there? That’s the front of the line. But wait! The line continued around the corner!
I may be crazy, but I”m not THAT crazy, so we blew that zumbawear stand and headed up to the outlet mall instead! Be still my shopping loving heart. We hit up Nike, new balance, victoria’s secret, gap, under amour and a bunch of other stores. But perhaps most importantly…
PINKBERRY!! This gem was a mix of coconut and mango fro-yo topped with pineapple, coconut, almonds and a waffle cookie. It was my supper and it was glorious. Oh pinkberry, I dream about you at night won’t you please come to Nova Scotia???
We literally shopped until we dropped. Remember how I didn’t sleep at all before we left in the middle of the night? Well we didn’t leave the mall until 10 pm. Loaded up with bags and getting a wee bit cranky. We hopped on the I-trolly and spent the next hour making our way back down to our hotel.
Let me tell you we were pretty darn happy to make it back to our hotel that night. After we reviewed all our purchases we hit the hay to rest up for Thursday – which will come in tomorrow’s post.
Have a good night everyone! 