Of course we knew this day would come but we didn’t think it’d be this hard to leave. There’s so much we still wanted to see and we only finished about half of our to-do list. (Not for lack of trying…)

Christmas is very much in the air with trees being lit all over the city this week and holiday markets springing up on every square. We celebrated the season in the most possible New York fashion by going to see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. Spectacular indeed:

Their synchronization is incredible.

Dancing furries, what's not to love?!

Even though our visa doesn’t allow us to stay on until Christmas, we got to enjoy the next best thing here: Thanksgiving. Sally and Racey invited us to their lovely home in Connecticut together with 20 other lucky ducks (mostly family) to eat turkey, pies and more side dishes than you can shake a stick at.

We started the day off with the traditional Macy's Thanksgiving parade.

We wanted to cross over into the park but obviously that was not going to happen...

The perfect setting for Thanksgiving day.

The table is ready.

The turkey gets it.

Thanksgiving dinner table

Meanwhile, back in the city the Christmas season is coming closer and closer. Decorations are going up everywhere and ice skating is the entertainment of choice.

Giant Christmas light strings in NYC

Free ice skating at Bryant Park

Putting the finishing touches on the tree at the Public Library

Endspurt is German for ‘final spurt’ as in “We’re almost entering our Endspurt in New York City”. A very sad thought but looking at the pictures and thinking about all the lovely people we saw and the wonderful food we ate and the marathon-theater-going that is still to come in the next two weeks (Hi Kuru!), we’re very happy about our stay in the city that only naps occasionally.

The sky tram to Roosevelt Island

All of last weekend the top part of the Queensboro bridge was closed for filming of the new Batman movie. That would have a been a great time to take the tram!

At Fort Tyron park which surrounds the cloisters up in northern Manhattan.

The entrance to the cloisters museum. If you've never been, it's quite a pretty spot. Entirely built from looted cloisters, mostly French. Fun stuff!

The Occupy Wall Street protest at Zuccotti Park

Visiting the Occupy Wall Street Library in Zuccotti Park. Not sure what happened to the library now that the park has been cleared... EDIT: Evicted like the rest of the protesters. http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/occupy-wall-street-library-evicted_b42238

The rage in New York is currently the cupcake. The trend is huge heaps of frosting in bright colors and packaging with more material than you could possibly recycle in a week. We have visited the numerous cupcake hangouts and distilled the best places for a New York tourist to sample. First on our list, by amount of fame, was the Magnolia Bakery. We bought four trial cupcakes including a peanut butter one that Nora declared the best cup cake ever on the spot. I think at the time of this proclamation she was affected by the late hour and more importantly having spent the previous hours eating and drinking at The Spotted Pig.

Magnolia’s cupcakes are decent enough and they have the best packaging for giving them as a gift but they are not the most delicious. Their fame is more attributed to their baking book then to their actual baking. The frosting is too abundant and sweet, overpowering the actually perfectly baked cupcake batter. Billy’s Bakery also suffers from the same mountains of frosting and sweetness and the cupcakes themselves are not nearly as moist. In fact it takes a dedicated connoisseur to tell that Billy’s is not Magnolia, they even finish the frosting topping in the same swirly motion leaving a spatula hole in the middle. Both are a chain by now and have several locations but both can most easily be visited on foot in the West Village.

Some just want to know which is the best cupcake so let’s get to the point: the winner (so far) is a tie between The Little Cupcake Bakeshop and Sugar Sweet Sunshine. Sunshine Cupcakes has a varied selection of cupcakes and other deserts along with tasty coffee to make it a charming place to have a sit down and relax a bit with some sweets and an afternoon coffee. Their prices are also the cheapest by far. The Little Cupcake is a little more hectic due to bigger crowds but they have some edgier creations. Just the right level of traditional cooking mixed with crazy like a blue velvet cupcake that looks like it had an affair with some smurf ice cream. Should you be a caffeine maniac, their craziness extends to their coffee menu: they serve drip coffee with three extra shots of expresso dropped in, it’s called appropriately The Insomniac.

I have never met a cupcake I didn’t finish until my visit to Red Velvet on 72nd street. The regular vanilla/chocolate combination was dry with hard frosting. Their special combination, Devil Dog, which is a chocolate cupcake and marshmallow frosting was thick and gooey. The peanut butter one was sugary and old. All four cupcakes tasted like they’d been left behind the exhaust of a running car for 20 minutes to give them a slight gasoline-carbon taste.

All of the bakeries seem to have a fixation with red velvet cupcakes, from Red Velvet who use it in their actual store name to Billy’s who refuses to bake a red velvet cupcake but feels the need to announce this on their door to avoid questions by the red velvet fans. Billy declares that all red velvet is made with coloring and therefore they can’t bring themselves to sell it. It can also be made naturally with beet root but that of course is more trouble than it’s worth, so indeed most places probably use coloring. (It also comes out tasting a bit funny as Nora and Ido found out a few years ago in Miami.) The interesting thing about Billy’s and their all-natural approach is that their frostings are a vivid neon bright color.

Are you Jewish and in need of a kosher cupcake? Head down to the East Village for Baby Cakes. It’s a small quaint cafe and truly all natural with options for Vegan’s and options for those with celiac disease, who need to avoid gluten. Unfortunately their cupcakes are a bit dense and dry. They do have several interesting choices and it’s nice that they carter to people who can’t have a regular cupcake but unless you need to, this is not a cupcake to seek out.

Honorable mention must go to ButterLane cupcakes. We can’t honestly grade them as they were a bit dry and uninspired but we had just come out of visiting the new Big Gay Ice Cream Shop next door and we might have been a bit over-stuffed with sweet as well as presentation. ButterLane seems to do well from catering and larger groups that can rent a room to make cupcakes together. We might have to give them another shot.

Today was the New York Marathon, the 42km race that runs through all five boroughs, closes some major New York streets and brings about $350 million in “economic activity”. That’s a lot of activity…

The first woman runner at the 30km mark. She didn't win though.

Winner of the marathon, Geoffrey Mutai, around the 36km mark.

Closely followed by the rest of the front runners.

Water, Gatorade and lots of bananas.

Is that really the right motivation?

Team Achilles runs with handicapped and wheelchair runners. There were some amazing racers there.

One of the many handcyclers in the race

Not sure how interested the dogs really were in the marathon but they sure looked stylish on the sidelines.

Lunch with a view

Almost lost our official photographer there. Luckily, Conor came to the rescue.

And how do you feel about this race?

Gorgeous weather, spectacular foliage, crazy runners = great day

This was probably the happiest runner we saw.

After the finish line, walking it off in heat blankets.

There were some pretty crazy characters running the race from a bride and groom to Batman and Robin. But our favourite by far was Christoph Niemann, the Abstract Sunday columnist for the New York Times who ran, drew and tweeted the marathon. See the results here.

A week ago the weather was 24° C and walking about the city in a T-shirt for October was a strange yet pleasant event. We embraced it, by taking the opportunity to visit The Brooklyn Botanical garden, it’s free on Tuesdays.

This week the weather cooled and the trees finally started changing color. My sister’s family came to visit and the day before yesterday we showed them the mean streets of New York.

Yesterday we  visited Central Park, Mila enjoying the ducks and other animals.

Today they got to enjoy a whole different weather.

Like summer in England, this fall in New York lasted two days (or two and half depending on who is doing the counting).

Fall has very much moved in. The trees are doing their best Indian summer work, our heating is running full time and pumpkins are on every corner.

The subway station for the National History museum is decorated with all kinds of flora and fauna mosaics.

The Bonsai exhibit at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden

Remember those giant sequoias from our post about the redwoods? This is the same tree. Just pocketsize.

Someone moved a piano into Washington Square Park and entertained us for the afternoon.

Kids (and adults) making gigantic soap bubbles in Central Park.

Once again exploring the Highline (if you're coming to visit us, get ready for this...)

Enjoying the last rays of sun on some Highline loungers.

A riot of colors, even in the city.

One of the many tributes to Steve Jobs sprinkled around the city. These optical illusions are on a fence in Soho. (Thanks for the tip Gordo!)

Young Steve Jobs

Old Steve Jobs

When you stand in front of the fence, you don't see either picture.

Some curious sculptures (literally) on the subway

Hilarious and over-the-top = oh so New York. This girl was walking towards us on the street, talking on her gold phone attached to her purse (where it connected to her cell phone).

A riot of colors outside the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens

Halloween decorations are well under way, these are in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

At the Central Park reservoir. Just beautiful.

Actually the title of this post should probably be Summer in New York instead because it was absolutely gorgeous outside today. Sunshine, blue skies, temperatures in the high 70s (around 27C)… Definitely not what we expected here in October.

We went to Central Park with Mauricio and Andrea for a bike ride. Of course the rest of New York had the same idea and there was a huge line to rent bikes but for some reason we got VIP treatment (probably because we spoke Spanish with the guy) and he offered to let us jump the cue if we would take a tandem instead of two bikes. Hell yeah!

We did a tour of the park up to 110th St and back and then went down to the Hudson and rode along the river and the park they’ve built all along the waterfront. (Obviously, the pictures in this post are ‘guest curated’. Thanks Mo!)

It was a clever enough idea: have a bunch of mildly attractive 20-30 somethings walk around with a box of your product, pretending that they just bought it. Hopefully make a bunch of other 20-30 somethings insanely jealous so they’ll go out and buy the same product. In reality though, it started to look a little freaky after we saw the fourth person with this carton stroll past us in Chelsea Market:

Notice how the box doesn't seem to weight anything? Those things are HEAVY in real life.

(Apologies for the crappy quality of the pictures. Taking stealth evidence is a lot harder than it looks!) There was also a suspiciously high number of young single men toting the same box and while it’s always nice to see men getting down and dirty in the kitchen, none of these guys seem the type…

Of course, now we are giving Breville even MORE free marketing by writing about this but it was just too strange and evil marketing genius not to document. Stay classy Breville.

Fernando and family came for a visit over the weekend and those few hours that we didn’t spend eating or drinking, we whiled away at FAO Schwartz. For the kids, of course.

Since it was Sunday, they had a few extra demonstrations of games and toys going on and also two guys who played the Big piano.

Afterwards, quite by chance, we stumbled upon the annual Polish parade. For this, 5th Ave had been shut down for about 20 blocks.

The actual parade was a bit disappointing since it consisted mainly of very small groups of people walking very far apart from each other followed by ear-drum shattering Polish rock musicians on sadly decorated floats. And what these guys where doing there in kilts we never figured out.

But at least Miss Polonia Manhattan got a smokin’ hot ride:

Afterwards we had to gather strength again and stopped by Eataly, the ginormous food empire Mario Batali has built in the Flatiron district.

Downstairs is a huge market where everything from fruit and veggies to meat, fish and wine is sold. Most of it Italian in some form or other.

Upstairs is the somewhat secret Birreria restaurant which isn’t really secret at all, they just make it tricky to get to. The food was excellent though and one of the house beers (Gina) was pretty tasty too.

If you’re not a big fan of ‘reading’ then this is going to be your favourite post yet. The picture to word ratio is going to be out of this WORLD! So let’s start:

Our apartment is close to St. John the divine, a beautiful and gigantic cathedral just north of Central Park. Next week (October 4th), animal mass is coming up which means people bring their dogs, cats, gnus, what have you to get blessed. We heard one year a guy showed up with an elephant. Will keep you posted.

The garden around St. John the Divine

Had some very spicy but oh-so-tasty fried Chinese chicken at Grand Sichuan on the Upper East Side. Tasty and cheap, what’s not to like?!

Our brother-in-law Guido would have laughed at this plate and asked for more chillies.

We also spent way too much time wandering around the FAO Schwartz store.

I don't know what's more disturbing, looking at the dolls without arms or the batshit price tag.

The intricacy on these figures is quite crazy. No idea how long it took them to make this.

The World Trade Center memorial was also on our list this week. It’s going to be quite beautiful one day but right now, with construction blaring on all sides and surrounded by security personnel, the effect is a bit lost sadly.

Two memorial pools were built in the former footprints of the towers, surrounded by all the names of those who died in the attacks.

That's pool number 2. In the background you can see the formerly called 'Freedom Tower' going up. It will be HUGE.

They’re not kidding when they call New York the city that never sleeps. There is something going on ALL THE TIME! To avoid going crazy trying to do it all or moping about opportunities missed, we just keep telling ourselves that you can’t dance at two parties at once and anyway, the one you’re at is always more fun.

Apparently fall is slow season for theaters so a lot of plays offer 2 for 1 deals on their tickets. We’ve been to see “Book of Mormon” which was hilarious and really as good as everyone says it is. (I can’t stop humming the songs and every time I hear a doorbell now I start singing “Hello, my name is Elder Price..”).
If you have been living under a rock for the past year, “Book of Mormon” is a musical by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of “South Park”, about mormons and the church of jesus christ of latter day saints. You can listen to the opening number here.

The museums are also offering some wonderful exhibits although so far we’ve only made it to the Met (which is so huge it should really count as more than one museum but they had a lovely bar on the roof where we had drinks with a million-dollar view) and a gallery in the Village to see the portrait of an acquaintance. It was quite funny to see the painting with the subject next to it:

Today we also went to the Affordable Art Fair which is going on all this weekend. We met an incredible body paint artist there, Emma Hack. She paints people to blend in with their background and sometimes you really have to look for the person, it is so incredibly well done. She was painting a woman while we were there:

Restaurants are so plentiful in this city that it’s almost painful to eat at home because you know there are so many places out there you want to try. This weekend we managed to at least make a slight dent into our list: The Spotted Pig (for pork belly and pig’s ear salad, both ridiculously delicious), Magnolia bakery (for possibly the best PB&J cupcake in the world), Blue Ribbon (for some very tasty brunch fare) and Billy’s (for some comparison tastings to Magnolia, thanks Cindy).

We haven’t done too many touristy things yet (tomorrow, really, for sure!) but we did make it down to the Highline the other day just in time for sunset. The highline is a park built on an old elevated train line originally used to get freight trains off the city streets. It roughly runs from 12th St along 10th Ave all the way up to 30th St. The tracks are still visible in most places and have been incorporated into the park design with some beautiful results.

The houses along the line are mostly old but new buildings are cropping up all over and being close to “the line” seems to be the major selling point. Not that I blame them, it really is a great place to see and be. Walking along it you feel like you’re in a futuristic Hollywood flic and any minute a flying car is going to whiz past. It is such a fantastic way to get through the city (we walked 16 blocks without even noticing it since you never have to worry about cars, lights, curbs or lampposts), makes you wonder why they don’t have these elevated walkways/parks in more places!

These loungers are actually on wheels on the tracks. Not sure if they still move though.

And as mentioned, the sunset was pretty spectacular too.

“A few months in NYC” has been on our travel list for so long that it feels almost surreal that we’re really here now. Thanks to Yiko we now call a 5th floor walk-up in Morningside Heights our home, at least until December.

It’s only been a week but we’ve already had plenty of New York moments: on our first night we passed a grocery store on the way to dinner and I went in to ask when they close to see if we’d have time to stop by for some milk afterwards. The cashier looked at me like I had just introduced her to my pet unicorn and said “Never”. I imagine this was followed by a roll-of-the-eyes and some grumbling about tourists but I didn’t stay to check.

Then a couple of nights ago we went for dinner with my friend Christine and afterwards for a quick massage at one of the ubiquitous Chinese massage parlors. Because really, what else would you do at 10pm on a Friday night in the Village?

Of course this weekend was also the tenth year anniversary of 9/11. We didn’t want to get too involved in the festivities (because, yes, that is almost what it felt like) so we stayed home on the day. But we did catch the free concert from the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center the night before, purely by chance, and it was beautiful. Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony was very appropriate for the moment.

We have also paid our respects at the navel of it all, the center of the city, the square of all squares, the core of the Big Apple. (The etymology of which, by the way, you can find here, if you’re interested.)

San Francisco was so much fun that we only get down to writing about it now, after we’ve left the city. The weather was perfect and we felt guilty for any moment spent inside so we ended up walking all over the city, saw parks and places that we had no idea existed, ate delicious food from all around the world and all together had a perfect time.

We started our stay with the mother of all tourist attractions: Alcatraz. And really, how can you not when in San Francisco? Luckily we had bought tickets a few weeks in advance online and managed to get in for the night tour. I’ve never been on ‘the rock’ before so I can’t compare it to the regular tour but Conor says he liked it better than the day tour. You don’t have as much time as the visitors during the day tour get since there are only two ferries to take you back. If you miss those, you’re spending the night on Alcatraz, whether you want to or not. So we made sure to be on the pier at the appointed time…

The old shower room has been converted into the audio tour pick up location.

History books tell you that no prisoner ever successfully fled from Alcatraz but during our tour we heard the story of three inmates who sound like they might have made it. They were crazy well prepared with papier-maché heads in their beds to fool the guards, tunnels dug with spoons (or possibly other tools) and a raft made out of a rain coat waiting for them at the shore of the rock. They also learned intensive Spanish in the previous months so part of me roots for them and hopes they made it to Mexico just like Andy in The Shawshank Redemption.

Of course like any respectable tourist we also had to take a ride on the cable cars. Because the evening had suddenly turned foggy and cold, we decided to head down the Powell-Mason line to Fisherman’s Wharf and warm ourselves up with some Irish coffees at Buena Vista. It doesn’t get more touristy than that! Great fun though.

We also visited the cable car museum which is actually the place where all the cables for the cars intersect, i.e. it’s the heart of the cable car operation. It reeks of burned metal and machine oil but the giant machinery and photographs of San Francisco from the last turn of the century are fascinating.

When one of those cables frays and needs to be replaced, it takes the engineers 5 hours to get it done. Of course this has to be done at night so the cables car keep running during the day.

Like every other tourist in San Francisco, we also admired the steep streets (not so much when we had to climb them) and took silly pictures:

We had all sorts of tasty food in restaurants, at markets and cafes. Thai food at The Slanted Door, sushi at Blowfish, sandwiches and salads at Blue Barn and all sorts of goodies at the Ferry Building Market. Including these genius meat cones:

Now we’re in Miami (always a great food stop, remember?), getting ready to head out to Costa Rica for a wedding. Life is tough; but I think we’ll make it.

If I try to put our hike in Yosemite into words it’s going to end up sounding like a sappy, revelatory religious experience, full of ‘amazing’, ‘awe-inspiring’, ‘incredible’ and the occasional ‘breath-taking’. And still, it wouldn’t do it justice because the park really is that awesome. To spare you, we’ve put together lots of pictures instead.

Just for orientation purposes, we drove to Taft Point and hiked from there to Sentinel Dome and on to Glacier Point. It’s a short route, less than 10km, but it showcases the most spectacular and popular points of the park: El Capitan, Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls, the Valley and Half Dome.

Click on the image for a larger and even more impressive version.

Spot the Conor

There are lots of fissures, especially along Taft Point, where ice and water have cracked the granite.

The most delicious and unexpected treat: Jeffrey pines smell like butterscotch. (Don't taste like it though...)

El Cap gets a good push.

The famous Half Dome. You need to get a ticket months in advance if you want to climb it.

Tunnel View - El Cap on the left, Half Dome in the middle and Bridalveil Falls on the right.

Ansel Adams Wannabe

Upper Yosemite Falls from the valley floor.

Sun setting on El Capitan.

Do you remember the Ents from The Lord of the Rings books/movies? I don’t think Tolkien ever travelled to California but he might have still taken the Sequoia sempervirens as inspiration. Not that these redwoods need to move or talk to become more impressive. Their size alone is enough; they really are THAT big. (And we learned that their cousin, Sequoiadendron giganteum or giant sequoia, is even bigger in circumference. Hard to believe.) Walking through the redwoods is awesome in the true sense of the word. They also ruin all other forests for you forever after because they just look so tiny.

Of course where humans are involved, silly things are usually not far behind: there are at least three different drive-through trees, a mobile tree-home built from just one log and the “Trees of Mystery” gondola ride whose advertisements start all the way up in Oregon and probably end somewhere down in Tijuana. We succumbed to the pull of one of these attractions but really who wouldn’t take the opportunity to drive through a TREE?! All that’s missing is an ATM and some fries and you have the US in a nutshell.

In case you’re wondering, the tree is alive and well. The sides are fenced off because that’s where its roots are still growing.

While driving through Klamath a little further south, we took a little side-trip around the Coastal Drive and lucky we did because in the river that enters there, we saw a grey whale mama and her pup.

They kept swimming back and forth along the river’s edge in the same long, slow loop. It looked like they were feeding because they would float downriver blowing out lots of air (as you can see in the video) and then swim upriver completely under water. Apparently they’d been doing this for a couple of days already. According to local gossip they were avoiding orcas in the open ocean.

Did you know that Mt. Saint Helen lost more than a 1000 feet of height when it blew its top off in 1980? That’s quite a lot of mountain to be coughed up into the air. That’s also why it looks slightly less impressive today.

Unfortunately we couldn’t get closer than that because the road to the main view point (not even the volcano, just the view point) was snowed in. In July. Great place this northwest coast.

In Mount Rainier national park we also encountered quite a bit more snow than we had planned for. We’d heard about the beautiful blooming mountain meadows and were ready to do some hiking. But this is what we found:

We did get to see a whole menagerie of animals though who were probably even more amazed than us at the strange weather patterns.

After all that snow we decided to ditch the mountains and head to the sea instead. We stopped by Vancouver (WA not BC) for a few days to stay with friends (thanks Jeanette & Phil!) and then hit the 101 going south. Last night we slept in an old lighthouse keeper’s cottage which has been redone as a bed & breakfast. It’s a very cute place although in the winter when the sun doesn’t come up for 30 days, cute is probably not the word most people would use to describe it. But in the middle of summer the place will charm the pants off anyone:

The lighthouse itself is quite small and slightly dilapidated but it’s magical to visit at night when there’s no one else around and you can watch the beams gracefully sweep over the dark ocean for miles. For some reason this lighthouse has 8 beams instead of the usual 1 so it looks more like a sedate disco ball than a stiff lighthouse.

The B&B is also famous for its breakfast which consists of 7(!) courses. There were 12 of us, full house, and we sat at the table for almost 2 hours just eating. It’s a miracle that we managed to get up at all afterwards. But we highly recommend this place for anyone who’s a fan of breakfast.

Today we climbed the Oregon dunes – allegedly they were the inspiration for the “Dune” series of books – and had some excellent fresh crab at the Bandon pier. So good in fact that we decided to stay the night to see what the bakery has to offer in the morning.

We arrived in the United States just in time for its 235 birthday celebration. We even celebrated in the state named after the first president. Although we did have a thirst for beer these things are hard to find at this kind of celebration, so Nora had a hot dog and I went for shaved ice with syrup while the crowds got ready overlooking Union Lake.

We arrived late and took up a spot by the path to the viewing hill which for some strange reason was decorated with the icon of an entirely different city.

Compared to Victoria the affair was less relaxed but with a more spectacular entrance. The fireworks where also accompanied by an eclectic soundtrack that ranged from Beethoven to Katy Perry.

In town we visited all the important tourist sites: the Space Needle, where we got that cool 360 picture in the header; Pike Market, where they throw fish around and the aquarium, which promised migrating salmon but the otters stole the show.

We stayed with some friends whose kids graciously lent us their bedroom, although they probably weren’t really consulted about this. (Thanks anyway Amelia and Mateo!) Frank took some time off to take us the to salmon ladder to see some Sockeye salmons on their migration. One of the steps in the ladder actually had a glass side to allow viewing of the most lazy salmons that go through the underground tunnels instead of doing the waterfall leap you see in the movies.

On the last day we went to the Boeing factory to see the biggest building (by volume) in the world. It sits on a 90 hectare footprint and is 11 stories high to accommodate the numerous assembly lines on the inside. Some of the lines are actually slow-slow moving lines so the plane is always in motion as they fit all the components at each station it passes.

We also got to see the new 787 being assembled. Most of its parts are built all around the world and are then flown in with the Dream Lifter, a specially built plane to fit the fuselage of another plane on the inside. Boeing hopes to be able to then put together the final plane in 3 days on their factory floor. The 787 is much like any other plane but the airlines are excited that it will allow longer routes as it carries 247,000 liters of gasoline and is more fuel efficient due to a carbon composite body instead of steel.

After we passed our PADI Open water certificate in the murky waters of Sarasota, we decided that our first real dive should be in the most unreal environment there is – the Epcot DiveQuest experience, i.e. diving in the Disney World aquarium. Our instructor had talked about it with some other divers and it sounded like a fantastically quintessential American experience so we booked our tickets and headed over to Orlando. Luckily Conor also has a friend who lives close to Disney World so we got free lodging! (Gracias Adolfo y Andreina!)

Our dive was scheduled for 5:30 in the afternoon and we arrived a little early to take a look around Epcot from the outside; the DiveQuest tour does not include entrance into the park. (Did you know that Epcot stands for “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow”? The future is not looking good…) Unfortunately there wasn’t much to see besides the wginormous golf ball and the monorail that links the different parks: Disney Hollywood Studios, Disney World, Epcot, etc. When our dive master picked us up, we got a look behind the scenes of the aquarium or “off stage” as they call it at Disney. Everything that the tourists get to see is called “on stage”, everything else is “off stage”. Even better, anyone who works at Disney World is called a cast member, not staff or employee.

We walked past the tanks used to pump around the water from the tank for cleaning. 21 million gallon of salt water, which gets cleaned several times a day – every 39 minutes a complete cycle. Then we saw the kitchen where the food for the aquarium inhabitants is prepared and which gets fully sterilized 4 times a day, making it without doubt the cleanest kitchen on all of Disney’s properties. Does lack a stove though.

After we had signed away our rights, life and first-born and promised that we would NOT touch the sea turtles under any circumstances or get too close to the dolphin enclosure (the former because it is a protected species and the latter because it will treat you as a toy – in either case biting will be involved) we changed into our wet suites and booties and were led up to the top of the tank. From there it looks like you’re just entering any old pool until a sea turtle suddenly sticks its head out of the water.

Our dive master warned us to be careful on our descent so that we wouldn’t accidentally hit a shark or something. Of course the first thing I did when I went down was hit a shark, almost. Very accidentally. The lazy beast silently floated past my head, with a look of contempt that seemed to say “I hate those stupid divers. Always in my way. I am swimming here. If only I were hungry, I’d take a bite our of this one right now.” After that fun and welcoming opener, the dive master took us on a little tour of the tank to orientate us and let us know which areas were off limits: anything closer than 3 metres to the dolphin enclosure and a little area in front of one of the aquarium windows because that’s where the “Finding Nemo” hologram show gets played and the kids would probably not appreciate it when Nemo suddenly gets gobbled up by a diver and *gasp* comes out on the other end or something equally horrifying. After our orientation tour, we were free to roam on our own for half an hour.

Over the next 30 min we swam with manta rays, tiger sharks and the aforementioned giant sea turtles. There were also a couple of groupers that looked to weigh around 300 kg each. Giants! We got to play with the ‘audience’ on the other side of the glass and entertained families eating their dinner at the Coral aquarium restaurant. Then we completed our circle and did the whole thing again. And again. And again. Yep, we were in an aquarium and the boredom started to creep in. After a while we dropped into the same circular route as the sharks, all thinking “THERE IS NOWHERE TO GO!”

Image blatantly stolen from the Intertubes

This is how the audience outside the aquarium sees the divers. (And that guy is in the forbidden “Finding Nemo” zone! How dare he upset those poor kids?!)

Wait, but where are the pictures of you guys diving? Ah well, that’s a problem – there aren’t any. The DiveQuest people make a video of the dive which you can purchase at the end of the experience for the bargain price of $35. But they don’t take any still pictures unfortunately. (Now that I think about it, I should have mentioned that in our debriefing questionnaire.) So you’ll just have to take our word for it: we looked like pros and had the audience in stitches with our funny antics under the sea.