Day 06: Shopping

Shopping trip planned today and not really much else which I think everyone is relieved about (so pretty short update).

Fast forward past the later rise, short bus trip and teriyaki chicken lunch, we get into the first shop of the day, Nike. Primarily in for trainers for the kids, I ended up picking up some Nike Air Pegasus+ running shoes too :) So now I have one less excuse. The prices were pretty amazing though, which triggered a spending spree for the rest of the day, oops… The good news is I now also have a new pair of Converse and Timberland too (all of which, including the trainers I landed for about £100 in total, which isnt too bad at all). Its weird when I was here 20 years ago, all I wanted to do was find computer game shops (none of which catered for Amiga, btw) and was pretty bored the rest of the time being dragged from shop to shop by my parents. Now it was me on the other side (Im turning into my dad aint I?).

The kids had some money saved up too and instead of squander it on little things here and there we suggested it would be a good idea for them to get something like a tablet. So the hunt for the best priced iPad Mini was on (in fact it turned out we popped into a electronic shop on our way home from the restaurant tonight at 11pm to check their prices and they had it at the lowest we had seen all day).

After 15 or so shopping bags later, we dropped them off at the hotel (the bags, not the kids) and headed off for dinner. Went to a little New Orleans styled bar called Fat Fish Blue, after no one wanted to go to Hooters (I’m gonna get a photo in there by the end of the holiday, just you wait and see). Kinda forced it on everyone as they had Tuna fish Tacos which I wanted to try - pretty freakin’ great they were too, yeah! This picture doesn’t do them justice whatsoever (iPhone-ography again today, due to the potential shopping I would have to carry).

After dinner my dad decided to get us some shooters (just me and him, in case you’re wondering). Well it says shooters but I actually go some sort of bourbon/shnapps bomb - got to keep the cool shooter glass too which I was happy about (I really get excited about the littlest of things).

Walking back along the road we decided to hike it to the hotel instead of wait for a bus (which took us about an hour, but stopped in at a couple of shops along the way). We came across a guy along the way with a baby gator (called Simon who was 3 yrs old FYI) who was doing photo ops for donations to help some alligator charity. So I asked the boys if they wanted to do it and to my astonishment, Patrick stepped forward as bold as you like to say he did (must just be a fear of heights thing). Afterwards he asked if I could post the photo on Instagram - haha - I think this is close enough :)

So on to tomorrow which I believe is quite an important day if I remember. Ahhh yes, the season première of Dexter airs on Fox - excellent! :) Oh and of course its Patrick’s 7th birthday too :P He had stayed up past midnight so have already congratulated him, though maybe I should have done it 5 hours earlier, due to the time difference in the UK (just a little confused about the universal guidelines surrounding birthdays in different time zones - answers on a postcard please). Legoland tomorrow with another early bus transfer, but I need to go now, I’ve been staring that this last paragraph for about 35 minutes trying to re-read it and doing that thing kids do when they start to fall asleep when sitting then catch themselves right before they topple over (Im a little exhausted in my defence, from doing all that nothing I was talking about earlier today, obviously :)

Patrick taking full advantage of the fact he had my phone today. Jeez - I look like cross between Indy (yeah, right) and some sort of European superspy (more likely, but not).