The shape and sponginess are repellent. I know people like them but eeeeeeeew. The part I was looking forward to was dessert. I had ordered freedom pudding. Remember when they were re-naming french fries in the capital's cafeteria? At that point Jason's step-mother wanted a torch for Christmas to make creme brulee. Jason thought that was too French and that it should be called freedom pudding. Thus, a legend was born.So we are sitting there drinking our free wine and waiting for our free escargot and stuff. Here's a summation:
Escargot are kinda good if you can stop thinking about what you are eating
yuck
yuck
yuck
yuck
HOLY MOLEY It's on fire! (the set the duck aflame at a nearby table)
yuck
yuck
yuck
yuck
Creme Brulee is great!
The end. Overall, I'm sure tons of people enjoy French food. I just happen to know two who don't. It was edible, sure, but it wasn't anything I'd ask for again. Except the creme brulee. Yum.
The next morning we were set to get off of the ship. We had chosen the "express" option, to take our own luggage. It was quick and easy. Customs was a cinch. By 8:45 we were in the car and on our way to: UNIVERSAL STUDIOS!
We arrived there and parked in a huge garage that had ET to help us remember where we parked. As we got out of the car, we realized that the overhead speakers were playing the ET music. That was genius. There were a million moving sidewalks that took us to the "City Walk" a place with restaurants, and a big movie theater, and a sunglasses stand that for some reason I now needed (oops). Then we headed for the part of the park we wanted to see most, Islands of Adventure. Before I go any farther, I want to explain that we had tickets for the Blue Man Group show that evening, and therefore a severely limited time in the park. We would really like to go back for a longer time, like a week. Islands of adventure consists of a bunch of smaller areas that are themed. The first one we went to and my obvious favorite was:
Marvel island.
We got there and the first thing we saw was a gift shop. I got a squished penny with Rogue on it. I am such a dork. We wandered around taking pictures of everything and decided to go on the spiderman ride. The wait was short, and then we got some 3D glasses and got on the ride. It was really cool. I'm pretty sure that the actual real space for the ride was small, but it felt big. Plus, there were effects like water spraying on us, and fire heating up our burnt faces. It was superfun.
We looked a little while longer around Marvel Island and since the only other rides were an Incredible Hulk coaster with a long line, and a Storm teacups ride, we moved on through a cartoon island to Jurassic Park.
Talk about cool. There were jeeps and all kinds of props and stuff everywhere. We decided to go on a river ride, and this next part is going to get kinda depressing and soapboxy, so watch out.
So, there we were, standing in line, and Jason and I saw a little lizard. Nothing scary or poisonous, just a little anole or skink, or whatever. We were looking at it, but in front of us in line were this bunch of terrible, low class loud people. You know the type, loud, scantily clad, and annoying. Well, they see the lizard, and they are scared of it. A tiny harmless lizard. One of them tries to kick it with their shoe, and another one "accidentally" stepped on it and killed it. I was really upset. That poor little lizard, just walking along when these unreasonable people kill it. I was almost ready to get out f line, but there was really no way out unless we fought our way through a huge line. So, we stay on, and I'm really upset. The mean people go, and we get on the ride. As we sit down, we see another lizard and another person behind us sees it too. What is their choice? They spit on it. Never have I more wanted to excuse myself from the human race in general. I know I've killed my fair share of bugs etc, but they were so callous. It was awful. As the boat pulled away, I decided to get over it and enjoy the ride. I was able to for a minute, but I'm still upset by those people to this day.
So, soapbox put away. The ride was fun. I knew it was a log flume like ride, but I sure didn't expect it to drop when it did. It was fun. After that, we walked on through the rest of the islands and since we were short on time, we moved on to the actual universal studios park. There we walked through a nickelodeoney area, and made our way to a cool fake street, where there were blues brothers, and singers.
A lot of the store fronts were from movies and stuff. It was really cool. There was a guy fake playing the saxophone and a woman who was really singing. Charlotte had told us not to miss The Mummy ride, so we made a beeline.
Even the line for the Mummy was cool. All of the rides we ad gone on had interesting things in the lines, like models of the cars, or other interactive stuff. The ride itself was AWESOME. It went all around and the best part was when we stopped and the ceiling was ON FIRE. It was really good. Then it was time for Blue Man.
The show was different than the ones we had seen previously, I'll write a full review later, but it was really fun, especially the paper part! We tried to go to hard rock cafe for dinner, got terrible service and decided to leave. We made our way to the house we were borrowing and crashed. Whew!
