Well, I'm back in one piece. (click to enlarge the photos)

I was super dizzy after the car ride up, but rested while my husband scouted out some places to visit the next two days. It turned out this timeshare was in the hub of what has to be the biggest center of tourist attractions in most of the U.S. I'm a quiet vacation sort and seeing fast food places every other building, tourists racing to get to DisneyWorld, SeaWorld, Younameit World, to stand in long lines and buy overpriced junk...well, it can blow your mind.

The timeshare layout was very nice, but we discovered to our horror that the approximately 100 A/c units on the roof directly above us(with no insulation) came down into the rooms day and night. No, there was no quiet to be had there. In fact, we were due to check out this morning, but agreed after two nights of the deafening noise and on a sagging mattress (so much for opulence lol) that we would drive that night and get home to sleep in peace and quiet on a firm mattress.



This is me lounging on the (sagging) bed:-)



steve making call in the sitting area of one of the two joined units





Me, vamping on the balcony

On the very positive side, despite the noise, the confusion, the tourists, I DID get away for my very first trip and did okay. I was dead tired by the second day, but we saw a few things both days. Day one we went to a place called Old Town. It was out to sell stuff, too, but it was pretty and relatively quiet. We even found a blouse I liked and then, in a head shop that had just opened, I got a really net black tee shirt with the cover for Abbey Road on it. I really wanted Janis Joplin, too, but not in my size. On the way home we found a chinese bouffet with really good food for an astounding six dollars a person.






me in Old Town on my Harley, cleverly disguised as a wheelchair.



steve not wanting his pic taken at the restaurant

Day two we went to Disney City (NOT Disneyland). It was loud and not worth the trip, in my opinion , but my husband's friends had said there was a good sandwich lunch place...only if you wanted to stand in line for an hour (or in my case, sit). We left and went to this eerie place Steve had seen that he said reminded him of The Stepford Wives, a place called Celebration City. It's a 'perfect little town' with houses and stores made to look like old fashioned towns, but nobody was going in and out of the post office, the drugstore, nowhere. The pool was deserted, as was the playgound and tennis court. The sidewalk restaurants on the parallel streets overlooked a small lake and so we had lunch there. The breeze was cool and birds were everywhere. I googled Celebration when home and found out that it belongs to Disney and is an experiment in community living. That explains a lot about why it looked so surreal.



Over by the water in a quieter section of Disney Town



...and a bird scavenging for food in Celebration city where we ate



map of the general area. you can see all the tourist places

That was it for me. If I go anyplace like that again, if it's top floor I'm not going. The wife of my husband's friend told us she wished she'd gotten a sleeping pill to take (she told steve this by phone after we were already there...gads).


I need to rest today, so you may not hear much more than grunts for even a couple of days in response to any comments.