Sunday, March 14, 2010

SPRING BREAK In Daytona Beach, Florida

 I just came back from one of the greatest trips in my life! This concept of Spring Break is amazing - especially when you go somewhere warm :) So, this post is probably going to be a bit long - even though it's just a summary...

It all started Saturday morning at 7 AM. Lotte, Eduardo, Hugo and me met up to walk down to the bus. We had to take it to Philadelphia. In Philly we then had to take the train to get to the airport.Then we had to fly to Atlanta and then to Daytona Beach, Florida :D




Everybody had left on Friday... but it was a beautiful morning.


The guys waiting for the train... I only brought my skiing jacket over here but the plan was to buy a new one in Daytona.


We have to wait a little more than an hour in Philly after clearing security so we eat some lunch and drink the first beer of what feels like thousands :)

We get on the plane and arrive in Daytona on time at 8.30 PM. Because it was the last night of the Daytona Bike Week,we had to wait for a while for the cab to take us to the Daytona Beach Oceanside Inn.




We were pretty tired after the long journey but me and Hugo wanted to experience the last night of Bike Week. The cab driver told us that it usually attracts around half a million bikers during the 10 days it lasts. Later we were told that there had been around 60,000 that night. It all happened on Main Street and I have never seen that many bikes in my life! We saw the most amazing Harleys, sports bikes, trikes and customs! So, that was quite an experience... unluckily, I didn't take that many pictures but you can see them in the slide show at the bottom. What we found out that night was that all the bars on Main Street closed at 2 AM :(

Sunday
Sunday, we sleep in till noon. The weather is alright. Around 20 degrees Celsius but the wind is quite strong. We walk up and down the beach to see what was happening. The ocean was pretty damn cold though! But the pool was okay, so we stayed there until it too became too cold.

At night, me and Hugo had learned that we needed to go to a street called Seabreeze. We go there and immediately find my spot called Razzle's.

I brought my jacket because it was a bit cold that night but I just looked like an idiot... but when the lady taking my 10$ in entry fee (cover) saw the two extra I flashed, she took my jacket with a smile even though she wasn't allowed to...


Monday
Since Spring Break is pretty much all about having fun, we followed the same schedule - beach/pool during the day and party at night. At the pool we met three guys who all knew each other. They were exchange students in St. Louis but they all studied in Sweden. Although one of the guys was Russian. 

We all agreed to eat together that night. Me and Hugo knew just the place since we had had a few beers there the night before. It is called Winghouse and the waitresses there are all pretty - well check it out: 

 
This lucky guy has birthday and so all the waitresses sing him a song while he is dressed like a chicken :)


We had dinner and then we found out that they served free beers until midnight at a place called The Plaza. We couldn't believe it since there was no cover either! But it was true... free beers :D


At midnight we were even more surprised to know that they only charged 1$! But we certainly did not complain!


Tuesday
Still same plan. The weather was okay but a bit cloudy at times. Hugo, me and Kirill (Russia) were at the pool. At one point I was looking out over the water and I spotted a group of dolphins



You can see them to the left on the picture. 

Kirill and me got the crazy idea to got swim with them. We figured that if we got in the cold water, our pool would feel like a jacuzzi when we came back. So we did it and it worked :) Hugo filmed it all and I'm trying desperately to upload it to youtube but it doesn't seem to work. However, I will get it on here somehow later!

Btw. Some girls came by in their truck (yes, you can drive up and down the coast!). I managed to shoot a picture. If you click on it and zoom in, you can read the text saying "BAD ASS Ladies DON'T DRIVE Mercedes!" :P



At night there was a 'Girls Gone Wild'-event at the Coliseum downtown. Eduardo had gone to Disneyland in Orlando for two days so it was just me, Hugo, Lotte and the Swedish plus Russian. And since this blog is being read by a lot of different people, let's just say that we had a fun night :P Below there is a picture of their bus...





Wednesday
On Wednesday the weather was really nice! Probably around 24 degrees and sun, sun, sun! This is how it looked from the pool...

Everything was perfect until around 2 o'clock when I decide to go to the toilet. I had my wallet by the pool. I figured that I'd better take it with me. I went inside, walked to the toilet, put my wallet on the toilet, did my thing and walked out again. About 30 seconds (!) after leaving the toilet I realize that I forgot my wallet. I turn around and start running because I had a funny feeling. When I get inside again, I see a man leaving the toilet in an awful hurry! I just take a quick look inside the toilet and see that my wallet isn't there. The man is heading to the car park but I catch up with him. He is a big black man with NFL potential! And I don't want to get him cornered since I was all alone with him. I ask him if he has seen my wallet, he says no. I ask him again with the same response. I then ask if he would mind showing me what he has in his pockets. He says I'm insulting him. By then he was standing by his car and I was maybe 10m from him. Just before he gets in the car I tell him that I'm an exchange student from Denmark and that all my important stuff is in that wallet. He still feels insulted and gets in the car. I don't know why I don't take his plates. But I run inside to the front desk and says that this man has just stolen my wallet. By coincidence the manager is there and we run out to see if we can see where he goes. But he is all gone. We then go inside and they call the police. It was maybe 2 mins from I caught up with him in the car park to this point. I wait by the front desk for the police to turn up and then this guy comes back again and discretely gives me my wallet back! I could not believe it! I don't know if he felt bad because of what I said or because he figured that I would have taken his plates and that him and his car were on camera.

Since we are 5-6 people by then I have the guts to tell them that it's the guy. But since he gave me the wallet, they say that they can't do anything about it. I check the wallet while the man is still there and nothing is missing. I try to stall him so the police could have a word with him. I check the wallet several times and count the money over and over again. But after a minute or two he has enough and runs out the door.

2 mins later the police shows up. I have a word with the nice officer but he tells me that since my wallet was actually never 'stolen', he can't do nothing...

Since the guy was only gone with my wallet for like 5-7 mins, I was thinking that maybe he had used my credit cards to pay for stuff. So I go to my room and get all my cards blocked.

But wow! I was so lucky to get it back!

Later, me, Hugo and one of the Swedish guys walks to 7-Eleven and come by this place:


I have no idea why that Danish flag was hanging there - but of course I had to get a picture :)


At night we knew there would be free drinks on the 509 Lounge on Seabreeze until midnight.

At midnight, the other guys left because they had to catch their plane home at 4.30 or something like that. Me and Hugo stayed. It was fun but but it had started raining when we left.


Thursday
The next morning the weather was so bad! So we just slept in...


At night it had stopped raining, so me and Hugo figured that we would have some fun the last night in Daytona. We went back to where it all started at Razzle's

I think that's the best club in Daytona - just a shame they didn't serve free beers :P I left at midnight since I didn't want to have a hangover on the day we went home but Hugo stayed behind to party with some French people he had met the day before.


Friday
Our plane was supposed to take off at 12.05 noon to Atlanta. However, when we tried to check-in online Thursday, we found out that Eduardo somehow was missing on the itinerary. So we thought that would cause a huge problem and therefore we were at the airport at 10 AM. 'Unfortunately', they fixed it right away and so we had to wait for two hours - or at least we thought so.

Half an hour before scheduled departure we board the plane. At noon the captain says that there is some really bad weather in Atlanta and that no planes can land at the time we are supposed to land. He says we have to wait on the ground for half an hour. So, we wait but then he announces that they have to extent it to 1.5 hours. We have a connection flight to make in Atlanta, so we get a bit worried about missing that. They give us the choice to unboard the plane. We do and go talk to a lady from the airline to ask what they can do for us if we miss our flight. She tells us that hour connection flight is delayed by an hour, so we're good.

We get in the air after waiting. When we get to Atlanta we just make the plane to Philly. At first we wait in the plane again but then finally takes off. We we're supposed to land in Philly at around 6 PM.

By now, I should probably tell that Hugo has a friend in Philly and that we can stay there. His friend has asked us to go see an NBA (Basketball) game with him between the 76'ers and Cleveland. He even has box tickets! We were so exited to go!!!

Then, after flying for 10-20 mins, the captain announces that we have to turn back because there is a problem with the nose gear. He says it's nothing serious but we can't fly all the way to Philly like that. So we land in Atlanta again. When we get off the plane some ground personnel look at it and we are told that they have to cancel the flight!

We all get off again and since we we're in the middle of the plane, there is already a huge line to see the airline folks (I should say person because there was only one young lady to serve the 150 passengers!). She did a great job but it went quite slow since it's pretty difficult to find new seats for everybody etc.

After 2 hours in line we finally make it to the front. She gives us four tickets to the 9.15 PM flight. Which, by then, was only 45 mins away. But then they delay it to 10.30 and then later 11.10. Finally, at that time we board the plane and fly to Philly! We arrive at 1 AM but we were supposed to have been in Philly at 5.25PM.

It was a really bad day and I'm pretty sorry about missing that basketball game! But all in all Spring Break 2010 was one of the most amazing weeks ever.


I think that was it for now... catch ya later,
Razzle Dazzle


P.S here are some more pictures

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