Today was Hotdog’s birthday, we planned a trip to KSC with Dolphin Tours, which we can highly recommend as our driver Pete was very humorous and knowledgeable, he also sold bottles of water for $1 – bonus!
I’m not a big fan of anything space and was probably going to be bored by lunchtime, however, once we were in the Atlantis exhibit my mood began to change to one of pure emotion and wonder. For Hotdog, this was a lifelong dream to see a space shuttle up close, and you can’t get any closer than this!
We spent a good hour and a half at the Atlantis exhibit, which included the Launch experience, which was really good fun! There are plenty of gifts in the shop, however, we wanted to get over to the Saturn V rocket. KSC lay on buses to take you around the centre as it is quite vast. The drivers are really knowledgeable. The VAB is huge and we managed to get up close to the crawler and a launch platform being constructed.
We arrived at the Saturn V exhibit – again the presentation had me in tears. The rocket is huge and all the exhibits kept us occupied. We took lunch in the Space Cafe – Hotdog treated himself a beer, well it’s his birthday after all. We sat outside looking out to the launch platforms.
Headed back to the main exhibit area as we wanted to see Atlantis again and buy some souvenirs. I noticed Space Shuttle astronaut – Bob Springer was due to appear in the main gift shop so headed back there. We lined up – had a brief chat and he signed Hotdog’s visitor guide book with a birthday message and dated it. We also got a nice holiday photo of us with him – mega awesome!
As it was a Monday the Space Centre was fairly devoid of school parties and children, so the day didn’t feel rushed, which was nice. We departed the Space Centre for our journey back to International Drive at 5pm. It was a thoroughly surprising and enjoyable day out.
We stopped off at iDrive for some supplies, walked back to the hotel as the iRide trolley couldn’t be seen at each stop we passed. Back at the hotel we took a quick shower and headed to Red Lobster for a birthday dinner. Hotdog didn’t want a big fuss made so we kept the evening low key. Our waiter sat us next to another group of the ’we’re on vacation brigade’ spread out over several tables, we asked to be moved and he understood why. Hotdog had lobster, he had to wear a bib and use nutcrackers, which was quite amusing. I ordered the scallops, which were gorgeous!
“Today was the best birthday ever!”, Hotdog said making our way back to the hotel – it could only be topped by Lady Gaga dropping by to sing Happy Birthday! Like yeah!!!