So, Manish Mittal (who by the way, now prefers to be called Manish, instead of Mittal) landed in Orlando, Florida on 24th of december. Me & Kekre picked him up in the morning from the airport & headed straight to Universal Studios. And from that moment on we had entered a crazy week of fun and adventure.
We saw some great 4D shows, Shrek and Terminator. I specially loved the ride "Back to the future".Anyone going to Universal Studios must check out this ride.It's like "Spiderman" from the islands of adventure,but kicks so much more ass.
Without wasting anymore time we left for Miami the next day.It was a long drive. So, we decided to play 20 questions.Mittal gave us a toughie with the democrat candidate up for presidency this time.Telling us we ought to know these trivial things.He said his name is Michael Obama.Which, I later found out to be Barack Obama.(He has become a compulsive liar ,keep this in mind the next time you talk to him) .Anyways, the bottom line is that Mittal won & we lost.
After checking into the hotel & parking our car in heavy rains in Miami, we decided the best thing to do is to get drunk.So, we found a nice place called 'Chocolate' and ordered drinks after drinks & ended the night with 3 shots of tequilla . The total bill was close to 240 dollars.But ,who cares ! - it was two years that we three had met.
Next day when we woke up, kekre wanted to experience the metro rail of Miami. So, we decided to go to the last point of metro rail, where there was a Mall too.After roaming around in the mall for a little bit & eating chinese food for lunch ,we came back.Whilst coming back we were given the first moment of silence by Mittal.We forced him to shut up his incessant blabbering for like 5 mins.where he did not ask any stupid questions or explained any interesting incident to us.
Then, we went to Miami museum of natural history.After that we headed to south beach of Miami.Where, we had some pretty interesting conversation about research & life. Mittal once again lied about everything in general.
The next day we left for Keywest & Key largo,which was filled with scenic routes & bridges.Atlantic Ocean on both sides & straight roads.We reached the next destination of Key west,which is the southernmost point of US.We decided to do some water sports in there.After rejecting many options like parasailing, kayaking etc. etc. we did speed boat ride for like almost 2 & 1/2 hour.We drove our boats ourselves & there were atleast two points in our ride when we thought we would be thrown out of the boat.But luckily that did not happen.
After that we drove around in key west & found a very nice restaurant.There we ate delicacies like Fried Alligator tails.After that we returned back to key largo where we had our hotel booked for the night.We took some time in locating it because Mittal was 90 % sure it's "Day's Inn" ,which in the end turned out to be "Key Largo Inn".
Next day we planned to find a beach in key largo & we drove around for like 2 hours but could not find any. So we decided to return back to Gainesville.
The next day we decided to slow down things & went to a very calm countryside of the historic town of Micanopy. There we browsed through a selection of old books & got some real nice books.From there in the evening we left for St. Augustine.Mittal sat behind the wheel & gave us some more thrills.Ohh did I not mention before ,Mittal is an 'excellent' driver if you have never been on a rollercoaster, but want the thrills of it.He cannot tolerate any car in front of him for more than 15 seconds .He gets bored by the color of it & has to change lanes or overtake it.Speed limits are for pansies & it's quite alright to drive at 85 mph in a speed limit of 65 mph.
In St. Augustine we loved the ocean side Walk,Fort,Beer & Wax museum, then we got back from there to Gainesville.This night was the 'Truth' night were Mittal did not lie for most of time or as he likes to say it said 'Half -Truths'.We called Singhal & had our shares of laughs.Me & Kekre bugged mittal till dawn.
Next, Afternoon when we woke up ,I was forced to buy a ticket to Busch garden for the day. We left for Tampa bay.But ,when we reached there after a drive of 2 hours, their parking lot was full .So we were unable to utilize the ticket for that day.We had our lunch there in Tampa.We then decided to return back to Gainesville ,but without any planned direction.We set out in the general direction of Gainesville from Tampa. We wanted to get lost & that's exactly what happened.The good thing was that we encountered some truly scenic routes on the way.We found an unknown beautiful lake,where we stopped & rested for a while. It was also the most Hilly area in Florida.After that we returned back home late in the night.
We slept early as the plan was to go to Busch garden again the next day. This was also the last day of the year. Also, the last day of Mittal in Florida.We woke up real early & reached Busch garden. It is famous for it's rollercoasters.Mittal pushed me into getting onto 'Sheikra' the largest vertical fall rollercoaster in the world.I was so scared ,but somehow I sat there & took the fall. After that everything was easy. It was real fun. Infact , this was the only good thing that Mittal did on this trip(So much better than falling asleep in the backseat of the car).To push me onto 'Sheikra'.After that I was ready for any rollercoaster .'Kumba' ,the next rollercoaster was a piece of cake even though we were all sitting on the front seat.After watching a 4d show & some other water rides, we were ready to drop Mittal at the Orlando Intl Airport. So we left for Orlando form Tampa. This was the end of the trip with Mittal.We dropped him at the airport at 6.45 p.m. After that we had to wait a couple of hours to pick up another friend of ours Vaibhav from Orlando Airport.His flight was delayed for like 1 & 1/2 hour.After that because of taking one wrong exit in Orlando, we had to spend the new year's eve on the road ,8 Miles from Okahumpka Service Plaza on the way to Gainesville.
Check out the Pics here :
All Florida Road Trip Pics
