We landed in Miami just after 5am this morning (27th August) around 30 minutes early meaning we got less sleep on the plane! However this plane was really uncomfortable so we weren't getting much sleep anyway. Imagine bad cinemas seats that only recline slightly and make your bum go numb. Hopefully our next plane will be nicer.
By 7.30am we had made it onto South Beach, with passport, customs, etc. taking almost 2 hours to get through! Although the sky was overcast the air was nice and warm albeit very humid.
We had a delicious American breakfast in a place recommended by our taxi driver.
Whilst eating breakfast we watched the world go by. A squirrel ran down from a palm tree, which for some reason seemed rather strange.
Stranger still was the woman who was taking her dog for a walk but decided it was to much for it and picked it up and put it in a dolls pram! There it sat as she continued her walk.
After breakfast we went for a walk along the beach getting our feet wet. The water was lovely and warm but we had to watch where we walked as the shore line was filled with little jelly fish, dead coral and the odd live sea anemone.
The clouds also made the sky look beautiful and there were lots of pretty little (dainty) sea birds along the shore.
Unfortunately my knot tying skills had something to be desired and my shoes fell off my bag into the water, with one shoe and sock getting quite wet :-(
As we approached the end of the beach we stopped on a lounger to read (and to dry my shoe/sock!). As we approached the lounger a guy came up to us and asked about the water. We responded it was nice but this was our mistake. He decided we were a nice couple and sat next to us on the sand chatting away merrily. Stu decided he'd revitalise the conversation every now and again whilst he sat on the far lounger reading his kindle!
Eventually the bloke left for his swim and I got back to people watching. Several people came near running, stopped, did a few stretches making strange little sounds then continuing on.
Someone else had decided to take a surf board and paddle with an oar standing up along the coast. I suppose it gives you something to do when there aren't enough waves to surf!
Having sat on the loungers for just over an hour we got turfed off (or we could have paid $10 each but we were going to leave in 20 mins anyway).
According to Trip Adviser Coconut Grove is a hotbed of galleries and arty things. As it was only 12km away we hailed a taxi and off we went. On the way we saw a huge dog hanging out the window of the car in front of us. When I say hanging out I mean its entire upper body was out the window not just its head. It looked like this was its favourite pastime of this dog as it was strapped into the car to ensure it couldn't climb out too far.
Unfortunately the 12km is as a bird flies, 30 mins later (and $30 lighter) we arrived to find 1 art gallery and a whole complex of closed down art shops :-(
On the bright side we did find a traditional American diner where we had lunch, a huge burger and a just as huge chicken club sandwich. Yum!
Feeling stuffed once again (the last few days seems to have been characterised by over eating!) We set off in search of a taxi. As we approached a junction, having not seen a taxi on the 10 minutes we had been walking a taxi appeared. As he got closer we saw he had a passenger but then he started making some odd hand motions which I interpreted as "wait here" and Stu as "I'm occupied". With nothing to lose we decided to wait a few minutes to see if he would reappear and low and behold he did!
So we set off to South Beach where we had left one of our bags and planned to stay there for the rest of the afternoon until we needed to go back to the airport.
On the way back we struck up conversion with our taxi driver, Vincent. Our turns out that Vincent had only been a taxi driver for a year. He used to be a civil engineer and had two master's degrees but got made redundant a few years ago and has had little luck in finding an equivalent job. He'd like to be a math teacher at high school (his wife's a science teacher!) but there's a 3 year waiting list for the training, so in the meantime he's being a taxi driver to pay for his two kids to go to college.
On arrival back at South Beach it had unfortunately started to rain adj were decided instead to just settle down in a cafe for an hour, leaving for the airport slight earlier than originally planned.
(Posting this now as I'm unlikely to get an internet connection at the airport. Will update tomorrow if anything interesting happens!)
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