Western Arab

California. Beautiful state. I love it. I have been here 4 days and it is wonderful. In that time I have visited Las Vegas, Nevada, the Hoover Dam in Nevada/Phoenix and San Diego California. With beautiful clear blue skies and impressive mountain views, California is quiet possibly the most attractive state I have visited.

Driving on the winding roads through the mountains and just the overall mountain views is a nice reminder of Lebanon. Lebanon has those winding roads in the mountains minus the guard rails and much thinner roads with beeping cars around each bend warning everyone that they are coming around the bend.

I have taken plenty of pictures and there will be plenty more to take. I will post some later.

I had a fun long weekend traveling from Fort Lauderdale west to Naples and North to Tampa and on to Port Richey, then east to Orlando and south back down to West Palm Beach.

It all started with Bakugan.

Bakugan Tournament

Nearly 300 miles away was a Bakugan Tournament at Gulf View Square Mall, and that was our excuse to take the trip knowing that the tournament would be at most an hour event, but the kids would love it. My nephews that is. =)

Kids were excited and had a great time. They got t-shirts, wrist bands and got to be official bakugan battle brawlers with a card with their picture certifying it! COOL!

Following the bakugan tournament, we headed to Olive Garden for breakfast/lunch. We did wake up at 6am just to be in time for the bakugan tournament so we were pretty hungry. After we found a place called stop and play which was just an arcade and after that headed to Orlando.

We arrived in Orlando and found a Radisson Hotel to stay in. It wasn’t as good as we had expected, but not bad overall but next time staying in a Holiday Inn would probably be the better choice. And from the hotel it was out to Old Town where there is an amusement park. We bought tickets for the kids to play on the rides and were convinced that any adult can ride with any kid on the ride. After smashing and bumping the cars on the race track around which they threaten to kick you out if you do so, we learned that they want kids of certain height to go on rides alone and won’t let an adult go with them unless they pay for the ride again. Alright so we broke their policy of no refunds and got our refund and then just bought individual tickets for the rides. Silly of them, we ended up spending much less.

But the amusement park gave me good opportunities to take shots with slower shutter speeds to achieve cool effects.

Old Town

Do not bump, Do not push

Double Ferris Wheel

I also found a waterfall finally … well kinda.

Waterfall at the Radisson

The next morning we headed to the waffle house, when you are in Orlando, there is some rule that you have to have breakfast at the waffle house. Had pecan and chocolate waffles, eggs, hash browns and orange juice.

Waffle House

Pecan Waffle

And finally from the waffle house, we started the trip to Nasa Kennedy Space Center. If you want to feel very little, this is where you go and see how gigantic things are and the great things that man can build.

Shuttle Dock

Space Stuff

Work Area Viewing

I like this video. I like the nasheed and I like the speech and this speaker.

Here is Khalid Yasin – خالد ياسين

The nasheed is Ghoraba (Strangers) – نشيد غرباء