We decided to spend our last day in the States in Universal Studios. Although we visited Universal Studios in Orlando last year we thought Eric and Corine would like to go there today. And I was sure this park would be different from the one Orlando.

After paying about $36 (x4) we could enter Universal studios. We got ourselves a park map and decided to visit the Jurassic Park ride first. I heard this ride did cost more than the movie and sends you, according to the park map, deep into the Jurassic Jungle for encounters with life-size dinosaurs and an 84-foot vertical drop. It all looked great and the vertical drop was really spectacular, only it was a bit short.

Then we visited some movie sets, like from Backdraft (with real fire and explosions) and Back to the Future (with an explanation of how they made the car fly).

Universal studios theme park is located near the real studios and from the "stairway escalator" we had a great view on the studios.

World famous is the Back lot tram tour, a ride behind the scenes. We visited sets and sites of movies and TV shows and some action rides like King Kong and Earthquake.

I really liked seeing all these fake streets and houses and spotted some sites from movies we saw like Back to the Future, Home Alone II and the famous (horror) house of Psycho.

We also entered a site with pieces they used in The Flintstones and back in the park Linda and Corine decided to try to drive a real Flinstone car.

We really enjoyed this day and we were lucky to have beautiful weather as well. This park is really a lot nicer than the Universal Studios in Orlando. Although most rides are the same the atmosphere is better in this park.

We stayed in the park all day and right before park closing we visited Waterworld which was a fantastic  show with lots of explosions and stunts.

When we got back to the car I felt sad because I knew this would be our last impression of the States. It took about an hour to get back to the Furama hotel and after having dinner we decided to go to bed early because we would have to get up quite early again for our flight home.

We got up at 5 a.m. and returned the car to Alamo. I really liked this car and I was sorry I had to give it back, although some problems appeared during 3.500 miles we used it.
Returning the car went quite easy and we were surprised how fast they handled everything. The shuttle took us to the airport and we got a last glimpse of LA.

Our flight left at 8.30 a.m. and went quite well, but at our stop in Washington the problems started. Because of bad weather above New York we couldn't get back in the air and we had to wait for an hour or so. Suddenly we had to be in the air quite fast and something went wrong when a car pushed the plane out of the gate. The plane had a small collision with this car and we had to go back to the gate to check if there was damage. It took three extra hours to get back in the air again. With more than 3 hours delay we arrived in Amsterdam at 10 a.m. (the next day) with nothing more than a memory of three fantastic weeks.

THE END