Days 68, 69, 70 & 71 - Last days in Orlando and arriving in Miami!

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Sorry we haven't updated for a while, our internet back in Orlando was absolutely crap and we hadn't done many interesting things anyway! Lol. Also, there were only a few pictures from today (Wednesday) so we'll upload them when we do a bigger photo upload to save time waiting for such a small amount of pictures.

Sunday was our relaxing day, literally we did nothing but lay around our hotel room and pop out to grab a bite to eat when we were hungry. We decided not to do much aside from this as we knew that the following day we would be spending quite a lot of time on our feet as we had booked the shuttle bus to Busch Gardens. It worked out pretty well doing nothing anyway, since everytime we decide to take a 'day off' it rains... and Sunday was no exception, so we were pretty glad when the day was over that we didn't plan to go anywhere that would have ended up with us getting soaked. We got a pretty early night that night, knowing our shuttle was pretty early in the morning.

Monday we woke up, got washed/dressed, and ate our breakfast in bed. Once again, there's not much point in us going into detail about what we did, as we've already explained Busch Gardens in our previous blog. Basically our shuttle took about an hour and 15 minutes to arrive at the park, and we went on all of the rides at least twice for the most part (some rides - 'Cheetah Hunt', specifically, around 4 times! We also walked around the zoo/animal areas, watching the animals in their habitats - even getting up close with an elephant munching on an ice cream! We stayed at the park from about 10:00am until it closed at 6:00pm, when the shuttle bus picked us up again to take us back to Orlando. Once we were back on International Drive we got something for tea from Walgreens, and went back to our room to eat it. Once we'd eaten, and relaxed a little from another exhausting day, we packed up our bags and cases ready to check out the following morning, once again getting a fairly early, final night in Orlando.

Tuesday was our last 'moving day' in America, from Orlando to Miami which of course, is our last stop-off on our trip. We got up early, finished packing our last few things after washing and getting dressed, and were checked out of the hotel by about 10:15am. We got the 37 bus from outside and got off at Universal Studios, where the connecting number 40 bus stopped. We waited in the sun for about 15-20 minutes before it finally arrived and we got on. It was a fairly long bus journey - about 45 minutes on the number 40 alone - but we eventually got to our first destination - Orlando Amtrak - with about 1 hour 30 minutes to spare. We then went inside and scanned our reservation print-out with the 'Qwik Ticket' machine to get our train tickets. We sat down for a little while before noticing that we could check our baggage with the station so that we didn't have to watch over our cases the entire time. We checked our cases in and then popped over the road to an eatery that served things like hot dogs, burgers, fries etc. We each had a hot dog for dinner and then went back to the station to continue waiting for our train. Unfortunately the clerk behind the desk informed us that our train was delayed by about 20 minutes, but what can you do eh? We sat and waited, moving outside to the platform nearer the expected arrival time.

When the train finally did turn up (about 30 minutes late), we showed our tickets to the conductor, who told us our seat numbers. We boarded the train and found our seats, which we were happy to find were very spacious. They were very similar to the seats that we had on the Amtrak train that we caught from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, with plenty of leg room and reclining seats that had leg rests that popped up from underneath. We settled down for our train journey to Miami, which would take just under 6 hours, and the train eventually set off at around 1:45pm. We tried to get a bit of sleep on the train (which was pretty easy as we could almost lie down on the seats), and we spent some time playing games on the netbook and Emma's DS to keep us occupied. We passed looooads of orange trees on our way to Miami (one of the things that Florida is most famous for!) and Craig even spotted an alligator on the side of a small river as we went past. As we wouldn't reach Miami until around 7:30pm, we also got something to eat from a small on-board cafe, with Craig getting a turkey sandwich and Emma having a cup of noodles.

We finally arrived at Miami Amtrak station at around 7:45pm, but we knew that we still had a bit more of a journey to get to our hostel on South Beach. We found the bus stop, grabbing a schedule for the 'L' bus on our way out of the station, and found that we had to wait around 30 minutes for the next bus. We sat waiting, at one point being approached by a guy in a taxi who tried to tell us that the last bus had left at 7:30pm, to which we replied that we had a bus schedule which begged to differ, and that the bus ran all night! The bus turned up at around 8:20pm, which we rode to the north end of Miami Beach, giving us some glimpses on the way of the Miami skyline all lit up at night, as we drove over the bridges/islands that lead to Miami Beach.

We reached our stop (which turned out to be the last stop that the bus was stopping at for some reason - it normally goes further) and waited for our second bus, which would take us down to South Beach. We waited around 15 minutes before the 120 bus turned up, and we then rode this for another 15 minutes or so until we reached the stop near to the hostel at around 9:30pm. We had checked Google Maps and knew which direction we needed to walk, so we soon found 'Jazz on South Beach', where we would be staying for the next 7 nights. Unfortunately, as we went to check-in, the guy behind the desk informed us that the private double room that we had booked was 'broken' (we assume a plumbing problem?!) and that we would instead have to stay in an 8 bed dorm room, although no one else would be staying in the room - it would just be us. We asked if this would be for all 7 nights, but after checking the system he told us that the person staying in their other private double would be checking out the following day, so we could then have that room instead. This all seemed ok, so we made our payment for our stay that night, but would have to check in again the following day to transfer to the other room and pay the remaining balance for our stay.

After receiving our room keys, we took our cases up to the second floor and found our room for the night. As expected with an 8-bed dorm room, there were 4 bunkbeds in the room, although it did also have a private bathroom. We each picked a bed, and as it was quite late and we didn't have much else to do (there was no TV and the internet only works in the lobby), we pretty much went straight to sleep.

This morning, we woke up at around 7:30am - we had set an alarm for 8:30am but as we had gone to bed fairly early (compared to recent nights) the night before, we naturally woke up early! We lazed around for a while before getting showered and dressed, and we went downstairs at around 8:45am to check our facebooks/emails using the wifi in the lobby. At 9:30am, the free breakfast became available, which basically consisted of a guy cooking everyone pancakes, which were pretty yummy! Once we had eaten our share of pancakes, we came back to the room to pack up our stuff so that we could check out of the dorm room, ready to move to our next room once it was available. We took our cases back downstairs, checked out of the room and then left our cases in a storage room so that we could go and explore South Beach.

We first walked around the corner to check out the beach. As expected with us being in Florida/close to the Caribbean, Miami Beach is beautiful - lots of palm trees, white sand and a very blue ocean lining the shore! We decided that we would come back to the beach later and instead check out the shops nearby. We walked down the street that our hostel is on (Collins Avenue), having a look in a Walgreens store that we passed and a few souvenir/surf shops in the area. We then walked one block across to Washington Avenue, which we had noticed when we arrived on the bus the previous night had lots of shops along it. Again, we went in a few different souvenir shops, clothes shops and shoe shops, mainly just window shopping. We also passed a puppy adoption store, which actually had puppies in the windows - they were tiny! We went in and saw a few more puppies inside, and stroked a tiny little ball of fluff that one of the women in there was holding. We just about managed to drag ourselves out before we got tempted to buy them all!

By around 12:30pm, we were getting a little hungry, so we stopped off to get a footlong chicken marinara sub from Subway to split between us. We then walked back along the shops on the other side of the road and got back to the hostel around an hour later. We sat in the lobby for a while, browsing the internet and watching the TV (at one point we were intrigued to see a 'National State of Emergency broadcast for the District of Columbia' pop up in the middle of a Tv programme, only to find after searching online that it was just a test - although they didn't really make that clear during/after it was shown, they probably had some people panicking for a while!). Although it said on a sign that check-in was after 3pm, we decided to check at 2pm to see if our room was available yet. One of the guys behind the desk ran upstairs to ask housekeeping if they had cleaned our room - they had, so we were good to check in! We paid our remaining balance and received the keys to our new room, which we were pleased to find was quite nice - we have our own bathroom and even have a TV (albeit, a very small TV) and a fridge, which we weren't expecting! Craig was also quite impressed with the remote-controlled air conditioning, which we haven't had before!

Once we had checked out our room, we headed back out to the beach, planning to get a sunbed with a parasol, so that we could spend the afternoon sitting in the shade (it was very hot today, and we couldn't be bothered to put on sun cream just for a couple of hours). However, as we got there and picked a parasol, a guy came over asking for payment - apparently it was $26 to rent the sunbeds! We quickly moved away - we only wanted a sunbed if they were going to be free! - and realised that there wasn't really any other shade along the beach and that all of the parasols were likely to be ones that you had to pay for. We decided that we would go back to Walgreens to pick up some pop/snacks for in our room, and to see how much the parasols were to buy there. We found a load of them for $15, which we decided was pretty reasonable - especially as we planned to spent most of the next week on the beach, and we would want some shade when it got too hot. Even better, when we went to pay at the till, the parasol turned out to only be $12.99 - bonus!

We brought our shopping back to the room, grabbed a couple of beach towels and headed back to the beach. We found a spot (the beach is pretty huge, and not too busy, so this was a pretty easy task!) and set up our parasol. We then spent the next couple of hours just lying on the sand, watching a person flying a stunt kite for a while and just generally having a bit of a snooze! By around 5:30pm, the sun was just starting to set behind the buildings lining the beach, so we decided to call it a day and head back to the hostel. We dropped off our stuff in our room then went back to Walgreens to pick up something to eat for our tea, deciding on an oven pizza, which we were able to cook in the shared kitchen at the hostel. Once we had eaten, we came back up to the room to spend the night watching TV. Tomorrow will probably be a full day spent at the beach, where we hope to get a last minute tan top-up before we get back to the UK next week!

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