Day 7: Disembarking the Norwegian Sky & An Afternoon In Orlando

After a late night making the most of our time on the Norwegian Sky cruise ship, we slept in longer than we had planned. We still had time for one last breakfast in the Great Outdoor Cafe overlooking Miami before we disembarked.

While you can have the porters take your bags off the ship, you had to have them ready the night before. We decided it would be faster to just carry our own luggage off.

I had been assuming we’d need to go through customs. You know, in the same way you would if you were getting off a plane. However we didn’t come across any customs officers, the customs room was empty and we just walked straight out. I’m assuming this is because we went through the brief customs process the day before on Key West.

We caught a Lyft from Port Miami to Miami Airport to pick up our rental. The cost of the Lyft was about $14.

Rental Car

We’d spent a lot of time trying to find the best deal for our rental. We had our life’s belongings to take with us so we had booked an intermediate SUV. To save money on the rental we used our own car insurance and we added our own SunPass Toll sticker (if you leave it up to the rental car company, they’ll charge you over $5 per day service fee plus whatever tolls you use.

We ended up with a Mitsubishi Outlander which was smaller than what we ordered  it we managed to squash everything in.  After picking up all our stuff in Palm Beach Gardens, we headed North to Orlando.

We said farewell to our a awesome friends Jairo and Jess in Celebration. We’ve spent a lot of good times together over the last few years visiting Disney World, Sea World and just enjoying their company. As with all our friends, we will miss them dearly.

Disney Skyliner

Then we headed to Disney World for a free ride on the Disney Skyliner. The Skyliner is a Gondola that runs between several of the Disney resorts as well as Hollywood Studios and Epcot. It is free to ride as long as you can find a place to park for free. 

Danielle had ridden the Skyliner before it officially opened, but this was my first time. It was a quiet and cool ride, faster than the bus and less stressful than driving between parks. I can see a day when they connect all the Disney World Parks and accommodation.

Orlando StarFlyer

From Disney it was on to another sky ride, the Orlando StarFlyer, which is closer to Universal. If you’ve ever been to Orlando, you’ll know this ride as the giant suspended spinning swings. It is right by the Icon Ferris Wheel. Jairo and Jess had given us these tickets a while back. This was our last opportunity to use them before leaving the country. While Danielle was outside her comfort Zone, I actually didn’t mind it at all.

Standing at over 450 feet tall and reaching up to 60mph, this is the largest swing ride in the world. The sun was nearly setting so it was a beautiful view of the Orlando city scape. There were moments where if you looked down it was a little terrifying but it was actually pretty fun. 

Le Cafe De Paris

Before getting back on the road and leaving Orlando, we had to do one more thing. We met a waiter in the French Restaurant at Epcot. He had told us about his parents restaurant, Le Cafe De Paris and we have loved going back ever since. Danielle particularly likes the chocolate croissants which were on special because it was the end of the day.

We had a baguette and some soup which was delicious. Definitely recommend stopping in for a little taste of Old Paris if you are there in Orlando! 

From there it was a long drive into the night to our accommodation. We stayed at the Sundestin by RetsortQuest in Destin Beach, part of Florida’s panhandle. The accommodation was interesting. he walls were made up of large mirrors but we were just glad of a place to rest our head by the time we got there. 

We had travelled almost the entire length and width of Florida in just one day. What is your favorite thing to do in Orlando when you visit?