Miami Beach

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On Miami Beach blue skies, parks, palm trees, colourful street life and art deco buildings combine with a tourist phenomenon that is, as best as I can describe it, Vegas, beach side. Oceans Drive, with its traffic of convertibles and hummer limousines is lined with such a plethora of bars harbouring semi clad dancing girls and bikini contests that one begins to ruminate at length on the very likely existence of a vast behind the scenes infrastructure of Scarface style gangsters engaged in less than friendly relations.

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To take it all in we stopped at a very nice, though expensive and slightly ritzy, beachside cafe/restaurant with alfresco seating from which vantage point we could people watch. At this time it became increasingly apparent that the very wealthy and beautiful members of the Miami Beach community are all very much inclined to display it. Convertibles cruised by, hoods down, revealing perfectly proportioned blond beauties, their heads held with an air of disinterest, sporting sunglasses to hide what I, being inclined to cliched thought, assumed could only be dark windows on to very shallow, very dirty and very, very naughty souls.

Vegas, Beach Side

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Such people watching thoughts were given extra spice by some local evangelists who provided quality beach side fire and brimston speaches for Miami's soon to be inhabitants of the lake of fire.

To add to this entertaining street life the Red Cross was exhibiting its military tents, vehicles and uniformed personnel in Lummus Park, the long stretch of green that lies between Oceans Drive and the ocean – with a bit of imagination, for a moment, I could imagine myself in a clearing of the Vietnam jungle.

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South Beach Hostel was less than pleasant with cramped dorms, no hot water and a Soup Nazi approach to its ‘breakfast included policy’ - I personally fail to see how a mangy bagel with a dollop of jam, served with all the zest of a military kitchen hand, can possibly be classified as breakfast.