We decided to give ourselves a theme park break today and sleep in. By the time we were up and ready to go it was around 10 am. We contemplated visiting Kennedy Space Center, but it’s rather pricey ($37 per person), so we decided to visit the Cocoa Beach area instead.
The directions we followed had us on two tollways and I swear there was a toll every two miles at first. It was really annoying! Finally the space between tolls widened. Once we made it to the coast, we started looking for this restaurant, Florida’s Seafood Bar & Grill, I had read about. It came highly recommended and it did not disappoint. Not only was the service exceptional, but the appetizer we ordered, rock shrimp, was delicious.
After lunch we went to the local Publix to grab some ice for the cooler for our lunch leftovers and a loaf of bread to feed the seagulls (though we never ended up using it as we only saw pelicans flying around but surprisingly, no seagulls). We visited Lori Wilson Park where we walked in the surf so that we could say we’ve been in the Atlantic Ocean and took some photos. We also tried to visit the Nature Center there but it was closed, so instead we headed north up the coast so we could visit the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. Unfortunately, we hadn’t checked out the website before going and the main (and what we thought was the only) bridge was closed. Apparently it was damaged during the hurricane. By this time we were getting a bit irritated with everything being closed, so we decided to head back to the Orlando area. We took a different route home to avoid the tollway and on the way, Joe spotted a sign for the Orlando Wetlands Park in Christmas, FL, so we followed a few roads to the entrance only to realize they too were closed. Yeesh! The least they could have done was post the closure notice on the original sign instead of sending people on a wild goose chase. Since we had come across it by mistake, we had no access to the internet to check it out ahead of time.
We found our way back to the main road and took a very long time getting back to the hotel due to heavy traffic. We should have just paid the damn tolls, I swear. What a waste of a day! Tomorrow we’re switching hotels so we have nothing planned. Sunday is our Discovery Cove adventure which I’m stressing out about since it’s only supposed to be 78 degrees! Maybe that is warm to some, but not for me to be wet all day. Hopefully we’ll get there early enough to snag a wetsuit; that should help a bit.
I’m glad we’re switching hotels too because there are some really loud people who checked in yesterday. I can hear them talking in their hotel room and they are across the hall. There are also two pre-teen boys who keep running through the stairwell which is next to our room as we’re at the end of the hall. I saw them run down the hall and go down the other stairwell so they think it’s some sort of game. God knows where their parents are; god forbid they look after their kids so they don’t disturb other people.