Miami

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Miami

Our flight arrived in Miami at 1pm. We decided to hire a car as it seemed cheaper than a taxi from Fort Lauderdale to Miami South Beach. The taxi was approximately 80 dollars each way and there wasn’t an easy bus route. We forgot to include taxes, extra insurance and a sat nav so the car ended up costing about twice as much as the 40 dollars we’d planned for, yet it was still the best option. Plus Oli wanted to drive in America at some point. We caught the free shuttle to the rental cars and headed to Thrifty, as it seemed the cheapest. We choose the cheapest car option, which was the compact range of cars. After paying we went to pick up our car, there was a line of about 15 different cars in our category to choose from, we checked them out and went for an automatic, sport edition Ford Focus. It took Oli a minute to get used to automatic – we knew that D was drive, R reverse and P was park, but we weren’t sure what L was so we left that well alone. Then we set off for South Beach. Rather than take the fastest route on the highway, Oli was determined to drive down Ocean Drive so we could see all the beaches and hotels. It took us a while to find Ocean Drive as the sat nav didn’t pick up a GPS signal. This caused Oli rage. I rebooted the sat nav and it then picked up a signal. All was well and the Oli rage subsided. We eventually found our way, it took about 50 minutes to get down to 7^th Street where our hotel was. We thought it would be cheaper using a car park rather than the hotel valet so tried to find the LAZ car park we’d found on the internet. We couldn’t find it driving round the one way system, so Oli stopped while I got out and ran round the block to find it. Eventually found the entrance along 5^th Street.

We checked in at the Colony Hotel, we were very impressed with the hotel considering it was chosen as one of the cheapest ones on the beach. We got changed and headed out to the beach. We headed north along South Beach. The water was warm and the sun was out so I went for a little swim. We walked up to beach then cut across on to the road at 20^th Street and headed back down. We stopped at a restaurant called 9 for fish and chips, Salmon and 2 martinis, one chocolate, one chocoberry. They were very strong and went straight to my head. We walked back to our hotel to have showers then we back out at night time for a mooch. I got a cup of strawberry ice cream and butter pecan ice cream from Bluebells. We walked up a bit further then went back to the hotel to bed.

We got up early the next day and walked in the opposite direction along South Beach. We didn’t go in for a swim this time but we did dip a toe in the sea. We went round to the bottom and back up the other side and made our way back to our hotel. We checked out then went for some breakfast at the Sea Cafe next door. I had sausage and egg with orange juice and Oli had an egg white omelette with vegetables in it. We lugged our bags back to the parking garage, paid the $22 for 24 hours parking then drove back to the airport the same way we came. We returned the car just in time and checked in and flew out of Fort Lauderdale, heading to Austin. Overall, we weren’t that impressed with Miami, the beach was nice but it reminded us of any generic strip of restaurant and hotels in a European country.

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Comments

[Phyllis Farrand]

Getting up to date
Lisa, you are catching up with your blog. Enjoyed reading about Miami. Hope you are enjoying Las Vegas. Is it hot? Have fun until next time. We really did enjoy having you here. Hurry up and come back. Love Phyllis

[Mum]

Amazing pics. Your eyebrows looked good on your skydive pic.C u soon. x