Epic Round The World Trip Adventures! Stunning Photos & Articles - A fascinating gap year travel journal covering every stop of their journey.

Miami, Florida - USA
Round The World Trip Journal

(4th - 8th September) Miami
Having said our fond farewells to Sue and Lou, to whom we are so grateful for their hospitality and tourist guide services, we flew from LA to Miami. We stayed at a hotel on North Miami Beach - the Ramada Plaza Marco Polo - a bit rough round the edges but cheaper than most! Our room looked out across the pool to the beach (where we could watch the thunder storms passing by out to sea at night and one day we watched a Jewish wedding ceremony down below) but you could have broken in through our flimsy patio doors in an instant if you had a very long ladder! See photo of orange hotel with two pools in front.
We visited the Art Deco district at South Beach. Jo was hoping we'd have cooler temperatures on this coast but as you may be able to see from the thermometer with Mike standing in front - it was about 100 degrees again! All the beautiful Art Deco buildings along the beachfront strip are actually expensive hotels, they really are impressive though. Even inside they are gorgeous too. They are all painted in pastel colours.
We went on a boat trip around the inland waterways - very Miami Vice like! We went down cruise ship alley where the cruises depart for the Caribbean. We saw brown pelicans as we'd seen in LA and lots of celebrity homes - mostly on Star Island. The biggest and most expensive house was owned by the basketball player Shaquille O'Neal.
We did the all-American thing in Miami - breakfast at Denny's, ribs and steaks at Tony Roma's and the shopping malls in which it takes you half a day to walk from one end to the other! We lounged on the beach and Mike said it was the warmest water he'd swum in on the whole trip. He did some body surfing here too.
Sadly, we had finally come to our last destination. We had crossed from the West to the East coast of America and were now only one last flight away from home. We departed Miami on the evening of 8th September, really looking forward to catching up with all our family and friends after so long away.