Welcome to the USA - Miami

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Wow, ten nights in the USA! We landed in Miami and stayed at the beach where I enjoyed the swimming. The sea was lovely and warm with none of the difficulty of getting into the water past your ‘goolies’ which you experience in New Zealand. The surf was very broken but I was able to do a bit of body surfing.

We visited South Beach to window shop, to purchase a GPS unit, and to ‘people watch’. While Eileen was consulting the map to find the Post Office, she accidentally walked into a passing woman. This was how we met the mature and slightly eccentric Marie Clare. Eileen describes her as “a very charming, beautiful, full of ‘joie de vivre’, resident French woman”. Marie Clare spoke several languages and she said she had been a translator at the White House before she retired. She liked to guess details of people’s lives so she declared that Eileen must be a French spy. She came to this conclusion for several reasons but mostly because Eileen responded to her in French and she described Eileen as “tres chic”. She told me, “This woman (Eileen) should be treasured!” The two women laughed and chatted as Marie Clare led us to the post office so we could post our cards. Eileen said she enjoyed the chance encounter enormously!

After a visit to the beach we decided to have dinner at “TGI Fridays” – right on the foot path. This is a great spot to view the eccentricities of South Beach – from the buff to the gigantic, the rich to the poor, the awkward to the elegant, etc.

Eileen tells the story of a large (read huge) black woman strolling along the street towards us with her friends. She wore a bikini ‘covered’ by a mesh dress where the holes were bigger than the size of a credit card – not a pretty sight. We soon noticed a black guy hanging out of a car window driving slowly enough to attempt his best ‘pick up lines’ on her. She kept walking and shouted back ‘sassy’ responses as they played ‘the pick-up game’.

By now, most of us were watching and listening, including a 15 year old black boy sitting opposite us with his father who was busy texting. No one was prepared for her back view as she strolled past revealing the bikini G-string! Arghhh ... the gasps were audible, and the 15 year old burst out laughing. His father, who was now sipping a coke, lifted his head from his phone just in time to catch the spectacle at eye level which caused him to choke and ‘sputter’ his drink down his front. This made the boy laugh even harder! It was very funny watching the reaction of everyone as she passed by.

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