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Well to begin I am slightly disappointed in myself as you may know I am keeping a written journal also, which I use as a reference for my blogs (which helps a LOT as my memory is truly shocking), and I have just found that I somehow missed out Miami completely!! So I will now attempt to rack my brains and remember what happened over 3 weeks ago!!
Ok so we had taken a flight from Las Vegas to Atlanta, where we had to wait around for a couple of hours to connect to our next flight to Fort Lauderdale. It was about 3am in the morning and we obviously hadn't slept very much, it wasn't very pleasant, so conversation was so minimal I don't even think we really spoke ha! Luckily we boarded the plane without any fuss and we were right at the front with extra leg room. So I went straight back to sleep (or as close to sleep as you can get), Ben got stuck talking to the air hostess and a lady next to him for a little while. We landed in Florida about 7am local time and had a little difficulty working out how to get the shuttle bus Ben had booked to our hostel in Miami and ended up having to wait for quite a while, but got picked up eventually. We arrived mid morning at the hostel, and were told it was too early to check in. Well we felt gross having been in the same clothes for 24 hours and it was rather warm in Miami, so we had to get changed in the toilets - which was a bit of a commotion. We left out stuff at the hostel to check in later on that afternoon and headed out to see a bit of Miami and get some food. We were definitely sleep deprived as neither of us was particularly with it and we ended up walking the completely wrong way and it was seemingly impossible to find somewhere to even get a drink let alone some food! We eventually found this little Cuban sandwich shop and got a wrap and a drink and went and sat on the beach for a while people watching and relaxing. It was really starting to get hot and being on the beach we wanted to be in our swimming costumes like everyone else. So as soon as it was time to check in we went back to the hostel, had to wait an age to be checked in by the incompetent ditsy staff and then had to drag our bags up the stairs to our dorm. Oh wow what a dorm it was. Having travelled for quite a while by now we had seen our fair share of dorm rooms, granted we hadn't actually stayed in a hell of a lot of 8 bed dorms but we'd nosed in at quite a few….but this was just awful. The room was absolutely TINY, and they had somehow crammed 4 bunk beds into it. So there really was not any space to move about, bags had to go under the beds as there was nowhere else to put them so getting to your stuff was a joke, and it was really hot and stuffy in the room. The beds were thinner than normal single beds, lumpy mattresses, the pillows were like a sack of pebbles and the top bunks were not only stupidly high up, they did not have ladders AND no railings to keep you in the beds so felt completely unsafe! So anyway we quickly got changed into our beach wear and decided that we would spend as little time in the hole of a room as we could!! We went down and hit South Beach and chilled there all afternoon ogling all the beautiful, skinny people and feeling a bit rubbish about ourselves!! That evening we went to check out this cool sushi bar recommended to us by a friend from home who lived in Miami for a while. We ordered a selection of bits and pieces and shared a bottle of sake which we began with cold then drank the second half hot to experience both - was very odd but did quite enjoy! We were so tired after dinner that we strolled back to the hostel walking down our dinner then hit the sack.
Next day we got up and caught the bus to downtown to see a bit of the city. We saw the Lakers stadium (from the outside) then walked down to the pier and took a boat tour of Biscayne Bay where we got to see the downtown skyline, the Port of Miami with all the huge Caribbean cruise liners, Fisher Island - the private island home to a selection of celebrities, and other islands and coastal areas full of huge expensive celebrity mansions so that was quite fun. After the cruise we walked around the harbor and got some lunch overlooking the rich people's boats. We then attempted to see a bit of downtown but it was absolutely dead and there wasn't really anything of great interest we wanted to see so we got the bus back to get ready for our night out…at the SUPERBOWL!! We got dressed up a little bit and walked down Ocean Drive which was buzzing as it was a really nice warm day so everyone was out drinking and eating and getting ready for the Superbowl. We wanted to find a typical American bar which was busy, showing the game and sold wings and beer. Luckily we found this awesome outside bar called the Clevelander - there were TV screens everywhere, loadsa people, there were pitchers of beer and all sorts of typical American delicacies on the bar snack menu, an outside swimming pool, a stage where stupidly skinny and scantily clad girls were dancing and posing for some sort of competition and the atmosphere was great. Some of the bar maids were getting their bare chests spray painted with football shirts and then strutting around serving shots (which obviously all the lads LOVED!!) I just couldn't get over how many girls there were with fake boobs - they did not move they were like two rocks on their chests ha! We got chatting to these Cuban guys for a bit, but they were a little dull so we escaped after a while to go find a spot at the bar to get our food. We then got harassed by an extremely drunk girl who tried to come on to both Ben and I and even gave Ben a bit of an uncomfortably long kiss ha! We had a really fun night and were glad to have found such a perfect bar for the evening. On the way back I got my photo taken with a bunch of very drunk but hilarious ladies who were dressed head to toe in green in support of their team! When we got back to the hostel we had one more drink at the bar and one of the guys I got talking to was trying to convince us to go out clubbing with them, we were tempted but we had drunk far too much beer for one night and we had to be up early to catch the greyhound to Orlando the next morning so we declined and rolled in to bed not long after. So our experience of Miami was short and sweet, we had some good times, it was just a shame about how awful the hostel was and how rude some of the girls were to me, but the Superbowl was definitely a highlight - couldn't really have asked for a better experience of that.
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