Its been a while since my last blog, but that's not a sign of inactivity, I just haven't got round to sitting down and blogging. During September, 3 builders moved in (well that's what it felt like) and we have been able to make the changes to our house that we have been planning for some months now.

It certainly feels like a transformation as we have changed the direction of car access to the garage and created a lovely kitchen diner with large French doors. The French doors will overlook a new garden space created through relocating the drive. I have put some before and after photos at the end of the blog.

At one point we had contractors working on the drive, electricians, builders, plumber and the guy fitting garage door. Never mind the project managing, the tea and coffee order required a spreadsheet and meticulous planning. 

Well unbelievably 3 weeks have passed and we have come to the end of our family holiday in Florida. In the second half of our week in Orlando we visited Universal Islands of Adventure and then Aquatica water park. I was forced to overcome any fears of roller coaster rides by being 'encouraged' onto Dragon Challenge (not once but twice) although some incoming electrical storms meant that 'unfortunately' the Hulk roller coaster had to be closed.

The water park was good, the highlight was a 80ft drop slide, where you stand vertical in a capsule and the floor drops away from you, talk about an adrenalin rush, its bizarre that I'm not bothered about that but roller coasters make me nervous.

Our Villa in Orlando is lovely, all the comforts of home plus we have our own pool. Its nice to be able to step out into the patio and take a dip. I've developed a technique of being able to float on the lilo with beer in hand without spilling a drop - although not when Meg is about!

On Sunday we went to Universal Studios. We had a great time, we met up with Gru and the minions, Shrek and donkey, The Simpsons and E.T. you forget how tiring it is walking round.

We went on as many rides as possible but gave the Harry Potter Escape from Gringots ride a miss with a 3.5 hour wait time.

We settled down to watch the parade at 7pm and went to get a drink, as I came to pay I realised my wallet with all the cash and credit cards was missing.

While we were at our apartment in Key Largo, a lot of the Americans were doing day trips to Key West and saying how busy it was. One of our favourite American expressions so far, (apart from the usual 'awesome' which everything is, even when it really isn't, and everything is a 'good job' even if its an unmitigated disaster) was from a guy who had just come back from a day in Key West and clearly finding it a little too much said (in a good American drawl " this ole dawg, just wana  sit on the porch"

So we did wonder what we were driving into as we headed to the southern most point of the continental USA. The drive down was quite special going over the bridges that connect the keys, and thin strips of land with the Gulf of Mexico on one side and the Atlantic on the other. We arrived at our hotel in the old town of Key West, an old Victorian wooden house, veranda and all - so this old dog had a porch to sit on! The hotel was beautiful, and the majority of the buildings in the old town were of this type, some really lovely colourful houses.

No sooner had I got back home from the European beer and football tour, then it was time to repack and take off to Florida for 3 weeks with Alison, Ellie and Meg. We are driving down the Florida keys, then on to Miami and finally Orlando to do some serious theme park stuff!

We flew into Dallas Fort Worth and then onto Fort Lauderdale. 

Picking the hire car up was a bit of a trauma, after a long time travelling you don't want to be faced with making decisions! After doing the documentation with the hire company you walk through into a garage to be faced with lines of cars. They all have the keys on the dash and you just pick the one you want, oh god, please just give me a car! After a few minutes of "I like this one" "no, I like this one" "this ones nice" "oooohh look at this one" I plonked the cases in a car and said "right we are having this one" and drove off. As we were pulling out Ellie said "I thought we'd booked a full size car, this is mid size" I was too tired to care, I just wanted to sleep. 

After the BBK festival it was great to get to a nice hotel peel off the clothes we had been wearing for 3 days and have a warm shower and shave, bliss! We headed to the nearest sandy beach and promptly fell asleep for most of Sunday afternoon.

Beautiful beaches

After a good sleep in the sunshine and feeling a bit more like ourselves, we set off to find a German bar that we had read about to watch the World Cup final. We gave our England shirts one last outing, after all it should have been England playing in this final! We settled down with a couple of good German beers and a meal of pork knuckle, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. We enjoyed the match and were pleased that it didn't go to penalties. Germany were the deserved winners and have played some good football throughout the tournament.

We set off heading for the BBK festival in Bilbao, the Spanish equivalent of Glastonbury, a little jaded after our exertions in Pamplona.

On the way we decided we should get the van sorted so that we could rationalise the number of bags we needed to carry with us to the festival, as we also needed to take the tent and sleeping stuff etc. We pulled into a garage and set about the task of emptying the van. We were well into the process when I spotted in the corner of my eye a police car approaching, here we go, I thought. Three police men got out of the car and started off aggressively asking questions. We hadn't got a clue what they were asking us but they didn't appear to be full of the joys of spring. We did the usual "English" and did our best to explain that we were on a European tour and going to the  BBK festival, which didn't really have any impact, but as soon as we said we had been to the San Firmin festival (Pamplona), we got a few guttural si, si's and they left as quick as they had arrived. To be fair to them as we reviewed the carnage of boxes, bags, crates of beer, strewn all around us, we probably did look a bit suspect.