Spring Break with Raul and Cecilia - Day 1

Technically, our Spring break began when we left the University and headed toward Raul's house on Friday. However I'm not going to count that as Day 1 because... well, because I'm not. Brief rundown of what happened Friday evening:
- left the school right after choir and drove for an hour
- got to Raul's house and made hot dogs (Raul heat's the buns up on a steam tray on top of the pot - 'tis funny)
-Raul played video games for a few hours and we watched Howl's Moving Castle (Raul was still playing video games while we watched)
-We ate fondue with Raul's parents. YUM! Desert was yellow cake with coconut icing. Raul's dad kept saying "coco" which may or may not have been a mating call - we don't want to know.
Raul: ._.; (that's a face... a very embarrassed face.  Henceforth, my contraries will be placed in parentheses directly after each thing I will comment on.  Enjoy.)
-Raul played more video games and I went to bed

So that was Friday.

Saturday we got an early start... or I did anyway. I woke up at 8:30. Raul, being Raul, didn't wake up until 9:00 when his mom dragged him out of bed (hey, I'm not a morning person, ok?!) for his optometrist appointment which was at 10:00. We had a quick breakfast of boyos and headed off to the optometrist.

The place was super crowded and they were playing "Phineas and Ferb" on the TV in the waiting room. They followed that up with "Fish Hooks" and between Disney's two really sad attempts to make decent Saturday morning cartoons, I swear I lost a thousand brain cells. Honestly, what happened to the good old Disney cartoons with good animation and interesting plot lines?

                                      This                  to                This?                                    

We spent an hour and a half in the waiting room before Raul finally went in for his appointment. Meanwhile, I went for a walk around the shopping plaza, taking care to avoid the boy-scouts in front of Publix as I went. I stopped at Pet Supermarket, hoping to pet the hamsters or the rabbits or even a guinea pig, but they just had to have Plexiglas covers over the cages... no fair!
 
Raul's appointment lasted only 1/4 the time that we spent in the waiting room and we were soon on our way. We stopped at McDonald's  for lunch and Raul decided to order sundaes for us and his parents. But the ice cream machine wasn't working so they had us pull forward while they tried to fix it.

Meanwhile... there was a duck.

(This is my car?  Why is my car a trapezoid?!?  And where's the ground!??!??)

Well, it was a real duck but you get the picture. (It also wasn't smiling like that...)
The duck wandered around for awhile and then decided to cross in front of the car. We sat and watched as it went into some bushes and then came back out. I decided to through (you mean throw? Gosh, Ceci) a french fry out of Raul's window (it almost hit me). The duck came waddling over and a bunch of black birds flew down. I'm not sure who got the french fry but the duck clearly wanted more so he stared at us (yeah, good job, Ceci).

It was creepy (made more so by the fact that the interior of my car is equally trapezoidal and devoid of any other features apparently).

The guy finally brought us our sundaes and the duck disappeared. I said, "Where's the duck?" And the guy said, "It's right in front of the car!" so we waited for the duck to move and then went back to Publix and then back to Raul's house before starting out on our trip to the beach (That had been the most fun trip I've ever had to that McDonald's.  Touche, Ceci).

A word of advice - check the weather before heading out to the beach (duly noted).

We saw that it was cloudy before we left. It soon started drizzling but we figured it wouldn't last too long - it's not like there was a giant black cloud looming to the east warning us of the coming deluge - oh, right! There was! (Duly. Noted.)

We decided to go to the beach anyway and wait for the rain to pass. We got to Ft. Lauderdale and there's this big art show thing going on along Las Olas Blvd. which happens to be the road we need to take to get to the beach.

But the road is closed for the day and so we are detoured amidst a ton of traffic through all these tiny side streets, which ended up something like this (red line indicates our path):

(The parts not shown below the map are when the roads detoured us to Narnia).

So I'm not entirely sure how but we eventually made it to the beach (back on Earth, of course). Only it was still raining and it was really crowded. Who would have thought that it would be crowded on Ft. Lauderdale beach on a Saturday? (Duly noted!) So Raul decides to drive along the beach looking for a less crowded area. Meanwhile, it's still pouring (Dude, let it go!). At some point we decide to give up on the beach and go to a museum instead (read: Ceci steals my phone and searches for museums, because amidst 50 clubs, bars, and a hooters nearby, looking for a museum is, of course, the better choice, right?) I take his IPhone and start looking for the Art Museum and the Science museum and finding prices and such for both. Meanwhile, Raul is still driving along the beach in the opposite direction of where we need to go. He eventually decides to turn around only to end up going the wrong way on a one way road because he failed to see the 'Do Not Enter' sign.

(For the last time, IT.  WASN'T.  FACING.  US.  If it was, you could have said something, vs. waiting for the incoming car to do it for you!  What is this, a lesson?  Who teaches lessons in the middle of driving through weird avenues???  Were you high?!?)

After nearly getting us killed (yup, definitely high), he continued to look for a place to turn around, only he kept ending up in dead-ends.

(Warning: actual driving course may contain more loop-de-loops and corkscrews than shown.)

We finally made it out to Oakland Park Blvd, way north of where we needed to be. Luckily Raul's IPhone was able to get us to the Art Museum just fine.

Of course, it was still raining. We managed to find a parking garage about two block (lolsingularwordwhenitshouldbepluralextravaganza) from the museum. We then had to walk through the pouring rain to get there. (The red X marks where we left the car)

After convincing the sales lady that we just wanted to see the free, everyday exhibit and not the $39.00 Vatican Splendors exhibit (Ceci: which I would have loved to see if it weren't so expensive, Raul: and if I wasn't broke), we spent about an hour looking at colored squares and portraits of people nobody knows. Then we headed back out and decided to find the Museum of Science and Discovery which is at:

401 Southwest 2nd Street (<---- that's secretly a 5)
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33312

 

Note well the circled areas on the map and the X with the question marks which indicates our confusion on where to go. We decide to consult the IPhone.

The IPhone informed us that The Museum was where the X is on the map... so we went that way.

Well, we sort of took the scenic route which took us past this Bird Guy with two Macaws and a Cockatoo and then up and down these swirly ramp things which took us onto the overpass and allowed us to cross the river.

We finally reached our destination, on the other side of the tracks only to be thoroughly confused because we'd somehow ended up in the slums of Ft. Lauderdale. Even though we were exactly where the IPhone told us to be, there wasn't anything in sight that might even slightly resemble a Museum of Science and  Discovery.

Instead of looking like

It looked like

We were literally standing between an old body shop and some run down houses. And there was no one around, which is probably a good thing considering if there had been anyone they probably would have jumped us.  (Nah, we were safe.  We looked disheveled and poor, after all)

So we started looking for the museum think (gRAmMaR) that it had to be around there somewhere cause the IPhone said it was. We walked up and down the road searching for it before realizing that the stupid phone had gotten us entirely lost (agreed: iPhone =/= smart).

Then I spotted it. Low and behold!  (Is that really how it's spelled?...) It was on the other side of the river... where we had just came from. And apparently people aren't supposed to get around Ft.  Lauderdale by foot because there are no foot bridges across the stupid river. None!

No, we had to walk all the way around to the next car bridge which also happens to be impossible to get onto by foot because there was a stupid gate at the place where there should have been a swirly ramp thing. (read: Ceci goes "This way!"  Me: "No, I think it's this way. Ceci: you're not smart, it's THIS way! Me: I don't think there's gonna be a-" Ceci: "IT'S MOTHER&*$%ING THIS WAY!!!!" Me: "Alright, jeez ._." *we walk ten feet toward the supposed miracle path.  Lo and behold, the wall I very much predicted to be there is, in fact, there. Me: *pulls Ceci's arm firmly toward the right direction as she contemplates climbing the barbed wire fence before silently commiserating her utter defeat.)

So we had to walk all the way around the block just to get onto the bridge and then we had to cross the bridge and nearly get hit by a couple speeding cars to get to the swirly ramp thing on the other side of the river only to discover that this swirly ramp thing was also blocked by a stupid gate.  (read: Ceci: "ok, it's THISSSSSSS~~~~ way!" Me: "no, you tried to use a shortcut before and it didn't-" Ceci: "CROSS NOW!!" Car: "OMFG" Car: "AAAAAHH" Car: *into phone* "so i was like totally gonna bang- what the hell?  Nothing, almost ran over some kids, so anyway..." Ceci: "THIS IS FUN!!!" Me: heart rate.  Failing.  Need medical atTHERE'S ANOTHER &*$%ING WALL THERE!!!!" Ceci: *utterly defeated and pwned once more*

So we had to walk all the way down the bridge along the road with the speeding cars that try to kill us.

We finally got to the Museum and saw the crazy gravity clock thing Raul remembered from when he had been there as a kid (yayyyyy). The balls are carried up and they go through all these tubes which somehow make the clock work... don't ask me to explain it. It just looks cool.

After the impossibly long walk we had just taken... we decided not to go the museum (read: still broke :D). We were both pretty tired. So we went back to the car, which didn't take us very long...

Sigh... (Sigh...... *face-palm*)

We went back to Raul's house and played more video games. Then we ate dinner and his Dad kept saying "badadum badadum, que pena!" which may have also been a mating call... I'm not sure.  (k, first, it was "bararam, bararam, que pena!" and second, shut up!) We went back to video games, or Raul did anyway. I stole his controller at one point and tried to play but he didn't like how I played so he stole it back.  (The concept of a map and compass eluded her to the point that a corner of a building in the game successfully stole thirty seconds of both our lives as she proceeded to force the character to figure out how exactly he is meant to phase himself through solid matter.  Ceci: I NO KNOW WHERE TA GO, OH MY GOSH) I went to bed. (me too)

Thus ends Day 1 of Spring Break.