Miami nights, the boat that rocked and I want to be an astronaut!

We arrived in Miami mid afternoon and headed straight to our hotel, the Wyndham. It’s an airport hotel so it’s a 30 minute ride in Miami itself. One of the nicer hotels though, quite posh!

Most of us had paid to get entry into a couple of clubs on both Miami nights. First night we were driven into Miami beach on the coach and Justin did a bit of a tour as we went, talked about the history of Miami (the city was built with drug money) the Cuban connections and the unique art deco architecture. The traffic was awful – there was some latino singer at the concert arena.

We were free to do our own thing for dinner so Naomi, Erin and I got a table at a sidewalk restaurant and had some (very expensive!) pasta and a bottle of Cava. This part of the evening was slightly marred when I had to argue with the waiter to accept my travellers cheque and then argue to get change from said travellers cheque (fyi I’m NOT going to tip you $40). We then headed to a bar where we got 2 for 1 drinks and met up with the other Contikis and also got to know some of the new white bus people better (they had joined us in NOLA).

I forgot to mention that we were at this time playing a game called ‘Assasins’. Basically everyone gets someone elses name on the bus, you need to get them alone and say to them ‘1,2,3 you’re dead’. Very sad game, white bus had been playing it a week or so earlier and it was ALL they talked about. We were not quite so enthusiastic and by the end of this first evening most people were dead! I was ‘assassinated’ by a Jonas brother in conjunction with some of the other boys, sneaky working in a team!

Anyway! Tonights nightclub was going to be Mansion which is one of the biggest clubs and a celebrity hangout (well if the Kardashians and Jersey Shore cast can be considered celebrities). Apparently if has lots of rooms, but I actually only saw 2 of them! We stayed most of the time in the first room we came into where most of the contikis were, the music was a great mix of pop, dancy stuff and older music. We had a really good time and danced until my feet got so sore I had to change my shoes (and thanks Ray for spilling a whole drink on me!).

Miami Ink!

The next day Naomi and I hit Miami and saw all the highlights! Miami beach was huge but it was a crappy day so no sunbathing to be had. We also visited Love Hate tattoo shop the home of Miami Ink which was very cool but the minimum cost of a tattoo is $250 :O (for a small black design!). We also visited DASH as Naomi was a huge fan of the Kardashians – it had hardly any clothes in it and you could buy a bottle of water with a picture of the sisters on it for $10 – WOW! We then hit a few shops as it was getting to the point where I needed new clothes. We had been on so many nights out that I was getting sick of my stuff, so I treated myself in Urban Outfitters. By now it was raining really bad, we didn’t have any coats or umbrellas so everytime we went outside we were getting drenched (thanks Miami!). When we went into store they were offering us paper towels to dry ourselves off, we were literally dripping. It was about 3.30 and the bus wasn’t coming until 5pm so we got a taxi back to the hotel.

Would you pay $10 for this?

Erin (my roomie) was ill, had been all day, so N and I headed to get our (bad) included dinner in the restaurant. Glad we went early as the service was super slow! Luckily we had enough time to go make ourselves beautiful in time for the booze cruise that night! The bus took us the Bayside area and we got on a medium sized boat and they cranked up the music and the drinks flowed. The queues for the bar were massive so everyone was getting at least 2 drinks at a time. I felt kinda bad though as I had not thought to bring any change to tip with, oh well . . . The slightly weird thing about this experience was the fact that the guys serving the drinks and playing the music were all dressed in their white sailor outfits, did look a bit strange. Everyone got merry pretty quick and the DJ did his best to speed things up by playing ‘SHOTS’, but I quietly gave my tequila away (bad Vegas memories). The party wound down, but poor Alana was really sick and had to get taken to hospital. A man down we headed onwards!

Group photo :)

Naomi and I attempt to DJ!

We waited around a while and then got onto a couple of buses to take us to Nikki Beach, our club for the night. This was, by far, the craziest bus journey I have every taken. The driver turned off the lights, put on some loud music and everyone went crazy! People were climbing everywhere, some questionable things were happening at the back . . . I have some interesting photos for sure!

Nikki Beach is a bit of a blur, its and indoor/outdoor club, very nice but confusing! I got lost coming back from the toilet which wasn’t fun but randomly met an English guy and had a chat about why we were both there ;& (A side note – both clubs in Miami had one set of toilets (with 3-5 toilets each) for the ENTIRE club. Cue huge queues and very skanky places near the end of the night. Very dumb).

Next day we waved ‘buh-by’ to Miami and took a short drive to Cocoa Beach, home of Kelly Slater! It’s a big surf town so we hit the beach and enjoyed a little swim in the Atlantic Ocean, later we had some (bad) dinner on the cute little pier and a little dip in the hotel pool. All in all, a chilled night (well deserved and needed). Especially as the next say we were headed to . . . .

The Welcome sign in Cocoa Beach!

Yes, I can surf!

Me, Naomi and some Indian guy at NASA!

(sorry about the underline!) NASA! Okay, well technically Kennedy Space Centre, but it’s still where the shuttles take off from! A very cool place, we did a simulated shuttle launch, watched an IMAX about the moon landings, toured the facilities including seeing where the launched take place and we got to see some of the capsules, rockets and space suits and touch a piece of moon rock! Naomi and I had ‘Get your space on’ (private joke gold bus!) dog tags made and revelled in the NASA branded merchandise! I am the proud owner or some space ice cream (still not eaten!) and a NASA baseball cap – which I’ll probably never wear but it’s still cool. This was once again one of the places that I hadn’t really thought about visiting but was actually soo much fun and I totally recommend it, we have 5 hours there but we could have done with another 2 or 3 at least.

Visit over, back to the bus (AGAIN!) and onwards to beautiful Tallahasse for ghost tours, impromptu pool parties and the infamous AUS vs NZ drinking competition. Yes things could get, er, worse?