Sharks, Turtles, Manatees...

Time to blog about another adventure, but shockingly this one is NOT a month old. It actually happened last weekend. Shocking, right? Maybe at some point I'll actually blog about something the day after or *gasp* the day of an adventure, but let's not hold our breath. :)

Anyways, back to the adventure. Last weekend I drove down to Cape Canaveral to help with some turtle research that University of Central Florida was doing. It was a connection through work but an opportunity that we had to do during our weekend. A couple times a year UCF does data collection on sea turtle in Trident Basin at Cape Canaveral and this time we had the opportunity to help out. Basically what we were doing was capturing as many green sea turtles as possible using dip nets on two boats.

One of the two boats, and those are dip nets.

The boats slowly travel the edge of the basin looking for turtles along the rocks. If you spot a turtle you put the net as far down as possible in front of the turtle to capture it. Or if you are super into the experience, you leap off the boat with the net to capture the turtle (surprisingly that actually works and was fun to watch). There were are also a couple large nets that were in the water that had to be checked about every 20 minutes to see if any turtles got captured. Once captured, the turtles were taken back to the dock where they got work up. The work up included taking blood, tagging, skin samples, biopsies sample, etc. At the end of the day, the turtles were marked with a number on their backs (using non-toxic chalk paint) and released.

I had to work Saturday, so I was only able to help out on Sunday. Saturday there were 15 turtles captured, but sadly only 3 were captured Sunday. Partially because we were not re-capturing any of the turtles from the day before, which we saw plenty of. I personally did not capture a turtle, but it was a super fun time being out on a boat and doing some turtle watching. 

Look ma...a sea turtle!!!!

 

This guy kept hanging out in shallow water by a wall, so he made an easy capture. :)

Got him (or her)!!!

Plus, I got to see a giant mantis shrimp, some nurse sharks, and a manatee!!!!!! That was actually my first time seeing a manatee so that was super AWESOME!!!

Nurse shark

There were a couple of the sharks hanging out in this area. They showed up a little early for Shark Week! :)

At first, the manatee was just a giant blob in the water...

But then it came up to say hi!

Or maybe to just breath. :)

And down we go again.

Time for another nap

After the nap, this manatee was CRUISING!

"That's All Folks!"

The End of The European Adventure

Well, the time has come...we are blogging about the last day of the European adventure. To be honest, it wasn't that exciting of the day. Got up. Caught a train. This time I caught the train by myself to the airport, while the rest of the gang was hopping one to Venice. But it was totally fine since I had a nutella croissant. :)

I ended up at the airport hours early since the gang had to make sure I was heading there before they left. That's what happens when you're the youngest child; you get extra concern and care. :) It was fine though. I wandered around (had to get my steps in, of course), WhatsApped some peeps, and read. Seemed fitting that I started and ended by journey in Italy doing the exact same thing...reading.

Then it was an 11hr flight back to Miami. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to sleep at all on that flight. But in good news, I got two cups of ice cream instead of just one on the flight. It's the little things. I landed in Miami 5ish in the evening, but didn't catch by next flight until 10:30pm. Ugh! I really just wanted to get home at this point. So I found a nice quiet placed and called the fam. This turned into me on Facetime with my sister listening to Gilmore Girls while resting on my backpack. Finally the time came for my next flight. I boarded the plane and promptly fell asleep until we landed in Jacksonville. Caught a bus to my car and then drove back home. By this time it was 1:30am and all I wanted to do was sleep. So that is what I did. Thus, ends the European adventure!

Since this was the most boring of the posts, here are some photos of flowers from the trip:

 I seriously can't go anywhere without taking a bunch of flower pictures. (Oh look, we are in Italy with a bunch of different architecture and scenery. Cool, but I'm gonna get close ups of flowers. lol.) Don't know why, but its true.

And here is a random photo of a door that I had to take because of the mini door that goes with it. That was not uncommon to see in Italy. We even got to go through a mini door at our AirBnB in Milan. :)

"That's All Folks!"

European Adventure - Day 6

From Nice the plan was to head back to Milan because I flew out of there the next morning and we hadn't actually saw any of the sights on arrival. The good news was that we got to sleep in some; the train didn't leave until 8:30 compared with the normal 6:30ish departures. Yay! But once again we made our way to the train station and elected to get pastries along the way (do you sense a pattern yet)? With pastries in hand we entered the train station to find out that the train line was closed between Nice and the Italian border. OH! GREAT! 

We were told to go to the customer service next door to get more information though the rumors we heard were either a line was down or workers decided to go on strike (apparently it is not uncommon for the train workers to strike after the Monaco Grand Prix because they feel overworked and are exhausted from the crowds. hmmm). So we got in a nice (pun not intended, but fitting) long line with everyone else trying to get into Italy so we could figure out was going on. We briefly talked about just hanging around Nice and exploring some more and catch a later train or a super early one in the morning. However, this was the one day that it decided to start raining on us. Every day before had been sunny and beautiful, but today it had to rain. Of course. Nix that plan.

There we were standing, and waiting, and standing, and waiting. Then it was our turn, time to figure out what was happening and what to do...oh wait, turns out there really wasn't any helpful information. The train was down for an unforeseen amount of time. Could be 12 when it was back up? Or 3? or maybe 5? Who knew? And then they were thinking/trying to organize buses to get people to Italy, but had nothing settled yet. To summarize, we were on our own. After some contemplating and debating we elected to get an Uber to take us to the first train station in Italy. It took MANY, MANY, MANY tries, but we finally caught an Uber. It turned out to be a niiiice Mercedes sedan

It turned out to be fun way to go to the train station. Got to see some different scenery and it was a smooth ride. Once in Italy, we exchanged our tickets for new ones to Milan. We ended up getting to Milan in mid-afternoon. After walking to the AirBnB and dropping of the bags, we decided to go explore Milan some. We found the closest metro station and hopped a train *gasp* to Duomo di Milano, which is one of the largest cathedrals in Italy (and Europe).

View from our Milan flat.

Duomo di Milano

 Right next to the Duomo di Milano is the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the oldest active shopping mall in Italy. It is definitely NOT like any other mall that I have seen. The architecture was something else.  But once again, we found some delicious gelato.

 After we saw those famous sights, we wandered the streets some more.

Then we picked up some pizza and chocolate and headed back to the flat. Thus ends another day.

To be continued...

"That's All Folks!"

European Adventure - Day 5

Well after a few days break, I'M BACK!!!! And now we can continue on the European adventure...

Day 5 dawned, and once again, we woke up early because this was the day we all had been waiting for...THE MONACO GRAND PRIX!!!! YAY!!!!!!!! With a bounce in our step we made our way to the train station to catch a ride to Monaco. When we stepped out into the streets in Monaco we all were in awe because soon we would watch one of the most (if not the most) historic races! We started wandering the streets of Monaco and, of course, came across some Ferrari's.

 Then the next order of business was to find food (food is definitely a priority in my life!). With our sustenance in our hands, we decided to make our way to the race track area. One of the first areas we came acrossed was the street with the starting grid. Super exciting! Then we found the marina and the grandstands there. Every moment the excitement kept growing. Oh. My. Gosh. We were in Monaco about to see an F1 race!

 It was still early (the race didn't start until mid-afternoon), but we decided to make our way to our seats to get the best view possible. Our tickets were for a hillside view, which means there wasn't actually seats. You just got to find a spot on the dirt/grass/rocks. Or if you were like the genius folks close to us, have a swing built on the hillside to watch race from (mental note: next time I go to Monaco for the race, bring a swing. That should fit on the plane as carry-on, right?).

Walking up to our seats.

Such a cute couple!

The view from our seats.

I started taking random pics. This is what happens when you sit on a hillside for hours waiting for a race

Pit lane

That's my yacht...don't I wish!

 

I got to sit on a rock, while these three amigos were in the dirt in front.

Got to spend hours sitting on a hill taking random photos, visiting, reading books on my phone, gazing out on the horizon, eavesdropping on nearby conversions, and watching two pre-races (F2 and something else).

After all that, it was finally time for the drivers lap.

Lewis Hamilton...GO HAMMIE!!!!

 

Only Lewis, only Lewis. Apparently it's too far to walk back to the pit lane. :)

And then....the race!!!!

GO HAMMIE!!!!

We actually had a really good view of the race. Most places in Monaco, you are only able to see a small portion of the track. From the hillside, we were able to see most of the track and race which was awesome! The race results, not so awesome. Hamilton got 3rd. :( Despite not winning the race, it was an AWESOME experience!!!!!

We then joined the masses leaving the hillside, slowly we crept forward until reaching main streets. Instead of following the masses to the train station, we decided to meander the streets of Monaco. Plus, we really wanted to see the Monte Carlo Casino. :)

Can you find the princess in the tower?

So this is where the 1% hang out.

The hairpin turn in front of Monte Carlo Casino

Casino de Monte-Carlo

They rolled out the red carpet just for me. :)

After gambling away our life savings (just kidding), we made our way to the train station, which still was packed and pushed our way onto the next train back to Nice. Of course, when we got back to the flat it was decided that we needed food. I was craving some crepes, so we looked up a close crepes restaurant and made our way there. However, when we arrived we were informed that we needed a reservation. The best part, there literally was two people eating there and the restaurant closed in an hour. Hmm. Weird. Anyways, we found another close place that had crepes and ate there.  I had a chocolate nutella crepe. Ooolaaalaa!!!! So delicious!!!!!! Thus ends a wonderful day.

To be continued....

"That's All Folks!"