Albania

So. Tirana, Albania. What can we say about it? Well, for a start, communism fell in 1991. Albanian communism was so hardcore, they told China it had sold out on its ideals. Prior to 1991, there were no roads into or out of Albania, and there were only about 600 cars in the country, all of them for party officials. Having only been able to have cars for the last 18 years there's still sights like the ones below to be seen in the more rural areas.


They have however very quickly grasped onto commerce and entrepreneurism. Here's a picture from a market we stumbled across. Mmmm tasty, tasty rabbits. Just out of the frame were some turkeys too.

Oh and it's definitely a waste-not-want-not society. Here's a streetside banana stall with the oldest, ripest (blackest) bananas selling for 10 Lek, and graded upards to about 35 Lek, I'm fuzzy on the exchange rate, but 35 Lek is around 50 Australian cents.

You may be wondering about the sights in Tirana, well one of them is in the picture below: Mt. Dajti, complete with Austrian and Swiss designed/built cable car.. There's a few other day trips to historic towns etc. but y'all've seen castles before.

Of course, why go all the way out of the city, when right in the centre of town you can take a toy electric car, a mini-quadbike or a mini-motorbike for a spin around an unfenced, public square?? Oh the thrill of seeing the adolescent employees hurtling around on the two right wheels (who needs the let ones anyway?) of a mini-quadbike, inches from pedestrians.


Oh, and on the way to Montenegro in a taxi, who did we see? Mr. Ed!!! So of course we pulled over for an autograph. It'll be up on e-Bay soon, keep an eye out for it.

There's no way to put up enough photos here to really capture the wonderfulness of Albania. It's a crazy place, but only because it's as far as we could see, it's a country that is so rapidly moving forward. There's a wonderful sense of optimism about all the little enterprising street-vendors. We constantly compare it to Mongolia. There's plenty of poverty, but it's balanced with hope. I'd love to know what it's going to be like in ten years.

Key West

The last stop for Nate and I in the US was Key West. What a great place. Very cool vibe and totally different from anywhere we'd been so far. We read somewhere that someone once said that they shook America and all the nuts fell to the bottom. Well that's Key West.

For some reason the place is full of chickens. Yes, weird i know. They are just cruising around and waking you up at sunrise like annoying peacocks on Rottnest. We saw a few squished chicks on the road too:(

Anyway, one of the local dishes is Conch fritters. Here are some we sampled... More dough then conch, but still delicious.

The first night we went down to the pier to watch the sunset and drink some booze. It's a bit like Broome where everyone goes to watch the sunset. So here it is...

While we were drinking the guys next to us saw these two approaching and asked for photos. Neil and I thought it would be amusing to get one too. Afterwards we were like "who the hell were they?", but it turns out we actually knew them! They had been finalists in that Can you Duet show we'd seen taped in Nashville. haha.

Anyway, turns out that the guy who I asked was actually famous too! He's Gabe Garcia and he was runner up in their TV show like American Idol for country music. So here's me and my new best mate Gabe. Check him out on youtube if you don't believe me!

Next day we spent the morning jet skiing around the island. Here's a pic of Christian and Casie on their jet ski.

That night we jumped on a 65ft yacht to do a sunset wine tasting cruise. Didn't learn anything about the wine but it was plentiful and Christian and Nate got to drive the yacht so everyone was happy.

On the way home we noticed a sign for a deep fried hot dog. Even though Christian wasn't hungry he decided this was not an opportunity to be missed so here he is with the hot dog. It was filled with cheese, wrapped with bacon and then deep fried. Luckily the bun wasn't deep fried too, although I'm sure that's available somewhere.

The last day we got up early and started the journey to Miami to jump on a plane. Lucky we did start early though as there's only one road into and out of the Florida Keys and we got stuck in a mega traffic jam. Not 2.5 hours like the one in Tennesse but still fairly rubbish when you have a flight to catch. Here's Christian showing the international sign for FAIL with the traffic jam in the background.

Florida City continued

Ok, we're really behind!! I'll try and catch up so the next few may be brief. We had about 10 days without internet which was way too long. Internet, don't ever leave me again!

Anyway, just a quick note on the previous post which Nate didn't finish(!)...

So, we went to the Robert is Here fruit stand to get some of his famous fruit milkshakes. There's a cool story about Robert that goes something like this...

As a young boy Robert's dad sent him out to sell cucumbers on the side of the road. After a whole day Robert hadn't sold any. His dad could not believe that people wouldn't want to buy delicious cucumbers so the next day he sent him out with a sign saying "Robert is Here". And he's been there ever since. Now it's a bit more than a fruit stand and they specialise in tropical fruits, jams, honeys and all sorts of delicious treats. Key lime honey is surprisingly tasty.

Let's be honest though, these 'milkshakes' come with a spoon and it is impossible to suck anything through the straw so they are hardly milkshakes as i would know them, more like ice cream blended with fruit and perhaps a dash of milk. Don't get me wrong, they are super-delicious. Here are some of the guys enjoying them. I had pineapple and coconut the first day and blackberry the second but there was about 20 or so flavours including their famous Key Lime.

We grabbed a Key Lime pie too which is one of the local specialities. Yep, it was delicious. I forgot to take a photo so here are some tiny bananas.

We also saw a sign for the Florida Panther which is think is just about as real as the Nannup tiger. Here's me and Chrizb looking terrified.

And here's Neil enjoying the serenity while taking a break from Canoeing (which is hard work!). Luckily there were 75cent beers back at the shop where we got the canoes. Oh yeah and a massive croc and some manatees! Hooray for manatees.

Crocs, 'gators and manatees - Part 1

Our next stop after Orlando was Florida City which we only stayed at as a way of getting close to the Everglades national park. For those of you who don't know and can't be bothered googling, it's an area that looks like a bayou or swamp but is actually a really, really slow moving river delta (or that's what I remember the park ranger saying, though my memory is often flawed).

There's a huge variety of wildlife in the everglades and I've put up a couple of photos of some of the more common stuff. My apologies for the formatting of the pics; I just can't get them where I want them. We were there in Florida's dry season, when the water is a lot lower, which explains the abundance of 'gators in one place. Those big black birds are buzzards (aka black vultures).

The ugly turtle is a Florida soft-shelled turtle. At first he was just a head in the water which looked really weird, but then he came out to bask and posed for a bunch of photos.

Our morning was spent walking a couple of very short trails admiring the wildlife, and the afternoon was spent paddling canoes, but I'll put up those pictures in Part 2.

TTFN!

Theme Park Madness

So moving right along to Orlando. Where is the time going?! Anyway, this stop was all about theme parks, although apparently Orlando itself is quite a nice place too, but I'm sure not that many people actually care enough to find out. I mean there's theme parks to visit! haha

Question: How many theme parks can you do in 2 days?
Answer: 4

As we were driving to the first one we noticed this interesting power pole:)

So the first park we stopped at was Universal Studios. It was a Monday so it was pretty quiet at the park and we weren't waiting more than 5 minutes for rides which was great. Here's a pic of Christian and Casie outside.

They'd just finished a Simpson's ride which was basically a small simulator for about 8 people. It was pretty fun, but I was rather queasy afterwards. Anyway, here's me at the Kwik-E-Mart.

The other fairly amusing thing we saw was these seat testers outside each ride. If you can't read it this one says "This attraction's seat restraints may not accommodate guests with certain body dimensions". Here's Christian ensuring he has the appropriate 'body dimensions' required.

Then we saw Doc from Back to the Future (one of my fave movies). Here's a pic of me with him. He told me 'thumbs up for science' and who was I to argue. He was actually quite a good likeness.

After we'd run around and done all the rides we wanted to at Universal we went nextdoor to their other park called Islands of Adventure. Now this park was wicked. Heaps more rides!! My camera battery had died by then so i don't have pics but it was so much fun.

The next day we went to Seaworld. We went to see the stingrays and you could buy food to feed them with. You had to put the little fish between your fingers so it stood up straight and then put your hand flat on the bottom of the tank. The stingray would then come past and suck it out of your fingers. It was so gross! That thing was slimey and sucking my arm!! I screamed and ran as soon as it grabbed the fish. I believe Christian may have caught it on video.

Then we went to see the Shamu show. I was horrified to find out that they call the whales at each SeaWorld Shamu. What a scam!! I'm not sure where the original Shamu is or if he's even still alive, but here is some killer whale we saw. Nate and Christian sat in the soak zone and needless to say, they got soaked.

Then we went nextdoor to Seaworld's water park, Aquatica. It just opened and it's really cool. They have a waterslide that goes through an aquarium with dolphins. Although that would have been the worst slide ever. The split second that I went through that part of the slide I didn't see a single dolphin. Although there was a viewing thing where you could see them and watch people coming through the slides.

The highlight of the day was this ride though. It was basically a giant whirlpool like river that went around the park. You wear a life jacket and basically get pushed around by the current. There's a couple of exits and you can also get onto some of the slides via this river thing. It was so much fun, i could float around in there all day. All we needed were some margaritas.

Louisiana Swamp Tour

The other thing we did whilst in New Orleans was one of their air boat swamp tours. Here's some pictures from our tour. We went on the larger air boat like this one. It was a 14 seater but they did have a smaller 6 seater too.

Here's Christian pointing out an alligator.

And this is how he attracted them to the boat...with marshmallows!!! Oh yeah and they only understand French too. The guide was calling out to them in French to come over.

Our guide was like the American version of the Crocodile Hunter. At the end of the trip he just pulled out this baby gator that belonged to his 6 year old daughter. It's name was Marshmallow and he let us all have a hold of it.

Here's Casie with Marshmallow...

And here's me trying to stop the alligator from attacking Neil...

New Orleans & Jazz Fest

So after Memphis we jumped in the bus and embarked on a 6 hour trek to New Orleans. It was quite a change in scenery and all of a sudden we were driving over the longest bridge I've ever been on. Well it was more of a raised road over the swamp land but it was really long.

After a brief mishap with the sat nav telling us that this was our hostel....

...we dumped our stuff and headed out to Bourbon Street to drink some Hurricanes (some deadly kind of frozen cocktail with several types of rum) and grab some dinner. We had a relatively quiet one as we were heading to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival the next day. The festival actually runs over two weekends and some people buy tickets for both weekends. We didn't have that much time but we figured in one day we could stuff our faces with as much food as possible and be quite happy. The festival is known for its food just as much as it is for the music.

First stop, alligator pies. Delish!

Here's me drinking my iced tea and margarita simultaneously. Surprisingly tasty.

Here's Christian with some fried chicken and Jambalaya.

The boys also saw a little girl doing fortune telling for a quarter. By the time I got there she had disappeared but here's her sign and abandoned chair.

And just for a little snack, here's Neil and Christian with a deep fried pork chop sandwich...

On the way home after the festival we decided to pick up some of the local specialty which is Crawfish. It's kinda like a yabbi. We picked these ones up from some dude on the side of the road. They were small but super tasty.

Here's us sitting on the side of the road eating our crawfish.

Oh yeah and the music was good too. My favourite was actually the gospel. I was loving all the choirs and this one woman on the tambourine was absolutely rocking it!!!