Sunshine on South Beach

Batdog! (They take Halloween very seriously)
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Our first stop in the United States was Miami, Florida (South Beach to be exact). To say that South Beach is a little different to South America would be a huge understatement (although they do speak a lot of Spanish here). I guess the best way to explain it is that this is the start of the holiday part of our trip after our adventures in South America!

Emma has been suffering some shopping withdrawals so we spent most of the first day browsing the shops along the main mall in South Beach. It didn’t take long for Emma to get back to form and the money tills could be heard ringing all over town! (Actually, to be fair I probably spent more money than she did!)

The Miami Vice 'drug lord' house!
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We had also planned to watch the Rugby World Cup final at the local Irish pub, but when we got there we were told that the place was full and that they were charging $20 to get in. We tried searching around for another pub that would play it, but apparently the cable network was charging the pubs $3000 to show the game and obviously none of them thought that there was much of a profit in it for them!

So instead I ended up spending the afternoon watching Emma get a pedicure at the local nail salon. It actually wasn't that bad (seriously, it wasn't!) The lady at the salon obviously felt so sorry for me after I asked her if she could put the Rugby on their plasma screen in the salon that she brought me out some cheesecake to munch on whilst Emma was getting pampered! Plus they also had a nice collection of Maxims and Men's Healths for me to flick through. AND it was airconditioned.

Can you see Shaq on his yacht?
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We spent the rest of our time in Miami lazing around on the beach soaking up the Florida sun, and also taking an Aqua Duck tour. The tour passed by the homes of Miami's rich and famous (including P Diddy, Gloria Estefan, Rosie O’Donnell, Al Pacino and Shaq!) which was pretty cool. We even got to see the Miami Vice 'drug lord' house!