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Published: July 14th 2011
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Miami! - by Jo
Miami was extra exciting for me as Natalie was coming out to visit for 3 weeks! On the plane ride there I couldn't control my excitement, partly as we were going to an English speaking place finally and partly to see her after 3 months away! Arriving at the airport I was a bag of nerves and we had to hang around waiting for her flight to come in for almost 3 hours, but when she eventually walked through the gate all the waiting was definitely worth it!
We got into one of those typically American yellow taxis and the excitement levels rose, especially for me as I've been wanting to go to the States for my whole life and have seen those yellow cabs on so many films and TV shows. The hostel was amazing, it had free breakfast, lunch and dinner which we thought must have been a lie... it wasn't, and we later discovered that the food wasn't actually that bad. We were right on South Beach, which we went to on the first day and lazed around on until we got too hot to move, which was pretty quickly. Miami, for
us, was the kind of place that makes you do spontaneous things. When walking past the famous Miami Ink tattoo place we seriously considered getting a tattoo and went inside, only to luckily find that the queue was too long and we had to leave. We did however then walk across the road to one of the many other tattoo places in South Beach where all three of us spontaneously got ear piercings from a tattoo-d man named Jose.
One of our favourite nights out in Miami was when our hostel arranged for a limo to pick us up and take us to a club called Mansion down the street. I shamelessly barged my way into the limo so as to get the best seat at the back, in charge of the radio. We cruised along blaring music out of the limo and feeling on top of the world, only to get to the club and realise that we couldn't afford a single drink inside - $16 for a vodka and mixer! But the place was so amazing that we were drunk simply on the atmosphere - there were dancers hanging from the ceiling, balloons being thrown around, platforms
for us to dance on (only the girls, the guys were kicked off because clearly they were not sexy enough) and confetti dropping from the roof. Rachael and I couldn't quite get over the fact that we were finally in a place where everything works properly and we could understand exactly what was going on all the time! Although we were soon to discover that this was not in fact strictly true... More on that later!
One day Natalie and I decided to go on tour of the Everglades which we had managed to get at a really cheap price from a random guy we met in an internet cafe, who incidentally also got us very cheap accommodation for our last night in Miami in a very nice hotel! The tour was great, we started off by riding on an air boat down the river where we got to see alligators swimming around with their babies. The boat went so fast and was so loud that we were all given earplugs to put in - something which proved quite difficult as a result of the spontaneous ear piercing I had got the other day, so for fear of being
deafened I had to hold the earplug in my ear the entire time, looking like a bit of an idiot. Our guide told us that the water we were going through was only 2 inches deep when it is usually a lot deeper, because Florida has seen one of its worst droughts in a very long time. That didn't surprise me at all since the heat was almost suffocating there, and I got quite sunburnt just from that 20 minute boat ride! Afterwards we watched an animal show which involved a man putting his hand into an alligator's mouth, as well as a woman from the audience being made to kiss a toad! We got to hold an alligator called Larry - if you're wondering, they are very heavy and feel (and smell) like leather.
Later in the day we met up with Rachael and went on a tour of the city. It started off in a bus, with a very irritating driver who insisted on doing Elvis and Michael Jackson impressions for the majority of the journey. We then moved onto a boat where we went on a tour of Millionaire Island, which is where lots of celebrities
have houses and yachts. We saw Shakira's house, Jennifer Lopez's, P Diddy's and Elizabeth Taylor's, to name but a few. I couldn't help but think that the houses were far too extravagant - do these people ever actually use their yachts?! I doubt it. This feeling remained as we took the bus through some other districts of the city - we would go from the ridiculously rich areas where people lived in mansions and hotel rooms cost $7,000 a night, to the poorest areas where people live in rundown huts and have next to nothing. We found it hard to understand how people could live in such luxury when they could practically see the poverty from their windows. My favourite part of the day was our trip to Little Havana, as it reminded us so much of the real Havana! We ate in a Cuban restaurant on Calle Ocho but sadly our annoying driver didn't give us enough time and far too soon ushered us all back onto the bus to endure another hour of his Elvis impressions.
A lot of our time in Miami was spent in one particular diner, which we discovered on the first day and
kept revisiting. I in particular had been craving certain foods for the entire time in South America, such as bacon and roast dinners. Obviously there were no roast dinners to be found, for that I will have to wait until I get back to England, but the diner sold bacon by the barrel, as well as French toast which I had always wanted to try and humongous burgers. Every time we went there we severely overdosed on food and vowed to order less next time, only to then go back and order the exact same amount. We couldn't quite get our heads around how big the portions are here!
Lastly I must just mention how much Spanish we heard as soon as we arrived at Miami airport. From uni we knew that there was a huge Latino influence in the city, but we had no idea just how big it was going to be. At the airport we thought we had escaped it, but I didn't hear a word of English spoken. There were whole streets where not a word of English could be heard, such as Espanola Way where we went for Spanish tapas one night. On the
buses there were posters that were entirely in Spanish, sometimes there was no English translation at all! It was interesting and at times we felt like we were still in South America, which was good but we were dying to get to a place where we could just feel like we fit in!
Miami was absolutely great, we loved every minute. It's a crazy, eclectic city, full of every type of person you could ever imagine and being there made us feel crazy with it! We would go back there in a heartbeat.
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