12th Dec - After a really long (and greatly enjoyed) sleep we took advantage of the cheap shopping in Florida and headed to the Premium Outlet Mall. A day of shopping has never really been my ideal way of spending a day but I thought I would have mellowed in the wake of our enlightening and soul searching trip - no. I was as moody and sulky as ever as we trudged from one designer shop to the other, being asked 'what do you think of these shoes?' or 'does this top go with these trousers?' Apart from being colour-blind and devoid of any kind of taste or style, it seems I still feel that a pair of trainers, a hoody, a diver's watch and a pair of jeans should take half an hour to drive to, look at, decide upon, buy and drive home. Tops! Still, Kirsty got some nice jeans, a top and a few accessories. But… best of all, we discovered that Kirsty's visa card is working again - Woo hoo! The evening saw another magical trip around Downtown Disney (we're not on holiday, you understand) and a great meal at the Rainforest Café.

13th - This was really just a driving day. As we expect to spend a lot of time in Fort Lauderdale and Miami, we are hurrying back to the coast to get back on track after our unplanned excursion to Orlando so that we can still get to AC and UJ's in plenty of time before Christmas (I want to teach UJ a few things about about sea fishing now that I've had a few hours at it!). The journey was a bit of a marathon once again (about seven hours) but pleasant, until we hit the Palm Beach area and the rain came down like we'd never seen before. You could not see more than 20 yards in front on the freeway! Within half an hour there was a big accident with one car having been hit and spun round to face the wrong way. We found a cheap hotel and turned in to give the rain time to clear.

14th - The rain had gone and the temperature was lovely. Everybody from the UK tells us it's brass monkeys over there, but it's easy to forget that when it never drops below 20 degrees C here. We're not gloating though, as we feel we are missing out on the Christmas spirit by not having that period of working like mad to get everything cleared before finishing work and waiting for the snow. We'll especially miss falling on our arses on New Years Eve after trying to skid on the ice on the way back from Birdwell Working Men's Club! Country music versions of Christmas carols and the odd bough of holly on a palm tree really is no substitute for a mince pie (or twenty) and a snowball fight. We took a scenic drive down the east coast towards Fort Lauderdale and Miami taking in the beautiful multi-million dollar beach properties in Palm Beach (Donald Trump's house there is HUGE!). All the beaches there are privately owned so there was no chance of a couple of rowdy Brits setting down their beach towels there. Fort Lauderdale has a gorgeous municipal beach on the road into the city, where the sand is about a 100-foot strip between the road and the sea and is passed by dozens of massive cruise ships, like floating cities, all day. We pressed on and found ourselves in Miami Beach almost by accident. As we both expected Miami to be skyscrapers on the sea, we were surprised that it is two boroughs - Miami (the mainland, where the skyscrapers are) and Miami Beach (where the art deco buildings on the beach are. This is on a long island joined to Miami proper by causeways.) So we searched - unsuccessfully, for hours - on the internet for a hotel remotely near our price range. Parking - arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrghh!!! The hotels are hugely overpriced and they all charge a fortune for parking. The only places where parking is free is in the areas that have bars across the house windows and where drive-by shootings are considered evening entertainment. The cheapest hotel we found was actually very stylish, modern and new but the walls must have been made of crepe paper and the connecting door of balsa wood, as we could hear anything from next door - and we do like our sleep. An awoken Kirsty or Ralph is an angry Kirsty or Ralph. We now view Miami as an angering city. We did take a drive around the city of Miami on the mainland to a get a feel for the place at night, which was surprisingly quiet for a Friday night, and went to sleep late (because our hotel neighbours did!)

15th - Woke up early (because our hotel neighbours did!) and went for a walk along Miami North Beach, across a causeway into North Miami proper. After a couple of hours walking in blistering sun through increasingly ghetto-ised neighbourhoods and not feeling like we were getting any closer to our destination, we decided to get the bus back and drive though the areas, for safety and comfort reasons. Miami is a huge sprawling city that is not very pedestrian friendly. Apart from the famed art deco lined avenues in South Miami Beach (which they call SoBe - for SOuth BEach), there is not a lot of Miami that is either as pretty as you would expect or as comfortable - in terms of personal safety. We apologise if anyone reading this really likes Miami, but we found it the only place in America we've been to that we did not like. It was largely run-down, too spread out to be able to walk anywhere, under the misapprehension that it is like Paris or Milan in terms of fashion and chic, and the people are largely unfriendly to the point of rude - and that's if they speak English, which is very rare, as a guttural/nasal Spanish is the norm. The weather is great and the art deco architecture is evident everywhere, which is really nice and unique, but it is not nearly enough to make up for the down-sides to this city. SoBe is pleasant, but does not live up to the myth that it has created for itself - more like Tenerife than Milan (and in the middle of a building site). Another problem we experienced is that as well as not being able to walk around Miami (we have loved walking round the other cities we have been to as it has given us a real feel of the place), there is also no where to park in the areas of interest as so we never got chance to get out of the car and have a look at the places which are so famous.It may be that this was because we were there on a scorching weekend, when it does get really busy, but New York this aint, and we never once got a sense of safety while we were here.We had had enough of Miami in a day and a half, so we put our remaining time there to use and caught up with Christmas shopping and e-mails. Went to sleep when the Cubans next door did!

16th -Woke up early when the Cubans next door started coughing their lungs up, and headed off to Naples. We wanted to spend a couple of days somewhere quiet without any pretensions or delusions of grandeur so we can have a couple of beach-baseball and football days and a bit of fishing practice before turning AC and UJ's holiday upside-down.