Miami - 3rd June 2012

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We are up early and gather our things together, we are off the ship before 07:00 - everything goes smoothly and we grab a taxi and head for Miami. This is about a 40 minute drive and costs $100. We check in at the hotel at around 08:00. Of course the room is not ready at this time in the morning, but we are given keys to access the various parts of the hotel (Swimming Pool etc) and are told that our room will be ready at around 11:00 and they will call us on our phone when it is ready. We are in a "City View" room, Di asks if there is any chance of a Beach view room. We are informed that this is possible, but it will be an extra $100/night - we decide to give it a miss!

We dump our cases and have a wander round. We are staying in the Loews Miami Beach Hotel, which is situated on South Beach at the north end of Ocean Drive. It is in the "Art Deco" region and is one of the larger hotels done in this style.

We explore the hotel and decide to sit out on the hotel patio and have some breakfast. Di isn't feeling too good today,so she just has tea. I ask the waiter and he suggests that I should have the buffet breakfast, I decide to go for this and it is really good. When the bill comes it is $27 for the breakfast - it wasn't that good!!

We have a wander down to the beach and come back to the hotel swimming pool. This place is great they have pool boys to set up your sun bed. They also come round with little drinks of mango juice, coconut water, frozen grapes etc., the also spray you with cold Evia water and Eloa Vera. We sunbathe until the phone rings at around 10:00 telling us that our room is ready. We go and get unpacked and come back to the pool. I think this is the best swimming pool that we have visited on our vacation.We eat by the pool, we have now started to order one meal between the two of us. We get Nachos and a couple of beers, even sharing the meal we are still defeated. In the afternoon there is entertainment by the pool with a guy singing Jimmy Buffet songs, which is pretty good. We have an easy afternoon, and then go back to our room to get showered and changed for dinner. We don't go far, and eat at a restuarant opposite the hotel - the meal isn't too great. We have an early night as it has been along day as we were up at around 05:00.

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