This Is Miami

This morning we packed up Sally (the Mustang) and headed south to Miami. We were planning to stop along the way to check out some of the beachside cities like Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale. The weather had other plans and we encountered near torrential rain shortly after leaving Orlando.

In keeping with one of our motto's "when it rains, go shopping", we located the Aventura Mall just north of Miami. Time to purchase some more Abercrombie & Fitch (one can never have too much) and underwear at stupidly cheap prices at Bloomingdales.

After safely stowing the shopping bags in Sally, it was a short drive to South Miami Beach (or just "SoBe") and our hotel on Ocean Drive. South Beach has the world's largest concentration of Art Deco buildings and is simply stunning. Ocean Drive is lined with Art Deco hotels on one side and parks and the beach on the other side. The hotels are even more beautiful at night as most are lit with colourful neon lights.



We checked into our hotel (The Beacon) and went for a stroll. Ocean Drive reminded us of the Esplanade in Cairns (only a hell of a lot cooler). Thankfully the rain had stopped. We found a dodgy little gay bar called the Palace and had a few beers. After dinner at a restaurant along Ocean Drive we went back to the Palace to see the drag show. It was refeshing to see that Brisbane is not the only place blessed with really bad drag.


As we headed back to the hotel, we experienced Wet Willy's. Now get your minds out of the gutter, Wet Willy's is a bar (and surprisingly not a gay one). I had been to one in Savannah, Georgia on a previous trip. They serve (extremely) alcoholic slushy drinks. Mine was aptly named "Attitude Adjustment". Things get a little blurry after that but we made it safely back to the hotel.