After crashing pretty early, I was awake pretty early, especially since the AC in the room sounded, as Nick described it, like someone leaf blowing a bunch of aluminum cans across the parking lot. But, I’d been tired enough that most of the night it hadn’t been an issue.
We got up and got ready, and then hopped in the car for the relatively short drive to breakfast at Southern Charm Cafe. Here, we immediately noticed that this is a place that’s got local regulars, including, seemingly, half the sheriff’s department. We’re at the right place! We were seated pretty quickly. Breakfast was excellent. Serving sizes were massive and the food was excellent. The servers were all wearing shirts with different snarky sayings on them (“you’re not always right”, “build a bridge and get over it”) so, it was our kind of place. I had an egg, ham and cheese sandwich on a biscuit (always get the breakfast sandwich on a biscuit in the south!). I don’t remember what Nick had but it was a massive platter of food. We both agreed we probably wouldn’t need anything more than a light snack before dinner!
Breakfast thoroughly enjoyed, we settled up and then hopped back in the rental car for the drive to today’s tourist attraction. This was a lesson in frustration with the GPS, but after some views of some massive cruise ships, followed by a slight detour, we did get on the right route and make it to the Kennedy Space Center.
I’m pretty sure we arrived in the parking lot about the same time that all the day tour buses unloaded, because the line to get in was massive, but once it legitimately started moving, it moved fairly quickly, and pretty soon, we had scanned our tickets and entered.
We started our day exploring the rocket garden. This area has some great photo opps.
Next stop was the IMAX theater for Deep Sky. This was about a 40 minute show and was pretty interesting. We were also really surprised that IMAX showings were included in admission. Honestly, there’s a LOT at KSC that is included in admission.
When the IMAX show ended, we tried to head for the bus tour with the idea of beating some of the crowds, but, because there was a rocket launch scheduled for the next day, the bus tour was on a delayed start, since they were moving the rocket to the launch pad area. So we explored some exhibits about Mars and Space Shuttle Atlantis, and found the memorial area for those that have been lost in some of NASA’s tragedies. As a NH educator, born in the same year that Christa McAuliffe died, the memorials were pretty moving. I grew up learning about her, and her legacy still very much lives on in the bubble that is education in NH.
When we finished up with the Space Shuttle Atlantis exhibit (which was extra awesome for me to see, because I watched one of the last launches of Atlantis from Animal Kingdom), it was clear that the bus tours had opened, so we headed to the line for that. We waited well over half an hour, but eventually made it on a bus. The bus tour has two stops, one where you can see some launch pads from a distance, and one that is a massive exhibit about the Apollo expeditions (also cool for these NH kids, because Alan Shepherd…). You also get quite the video spiel, where you learn things like the vehicle assembly building can hold over 250 billion ping pong balls, because you know in America, we measure in any unit but metric! Seriously, though, the bus tour was excellent, and once we got through the wait at the main complex, the rest of the waits for buses weren’t bad at all.
When we finished the bus tour and returned to the main visitor center, we explored the last couple areas we hadn’t already and did some more picture taking.
Was Kennedy Space Center worth the visit? Very much so. Was it even more worth it because I got the tickets with a great discount? Most definitely. Next time, though, we’re going to do the bus tour that you pay extra for.
We found our car with lots of key fob clicking (they need row numbers like Disney and Universal have), and headed for an early dinner at Fishlips by Port Canaveral. We were able to get covered outdoor seats on a great upstairs covered patio, next to the open air “windows” a few minutes before 4. I knew what this meant! Nick was immediately impressed with the view, but as the resident travel prince, hadn’t figured out yet that we’d get to see the ships sail by!
Fishlips was fantastic. Service was great. Food (Nick had coconut crusted grouper, I had a grouper sandwich) and drinks (something cherry times 2 for him, a pineapple coconut margarita situation and a key lime colada for me) were excellent, and the view was wicked fun. We saw the Fantasy sail first, followed by the world’s largest cruise ship, and an MSC ship that also was pretty big. We both would come here again, without hesitation.
Dinner thoroughly enjoyed, we passed the sobriety checkpoint that is the staircase to the exit, hopped in the car and returned to the hotel. Here we got some packing and reorganizing done and enjoyed that key lime snickerdoodle cookie we had bought the day before, before showering and crashing. It had been another good vacation day!
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