From the seventh to the fifteenth of March, my host family and I went to Miami for spring break. I was really excited although my host sister unfortunately didn‘t come with us since she was on a band trip. We got up early on Saturday and left the house at 8 o‘clock. Next, we drove to the Landrum‘s house to pick them up, since we traveled together. An hour later we were on our way to New Orleans, where we spent our first night. The trip to Miami takes a total of 19 hours, so we didn‘t do it in one day. In the car we watched two movies; „knives out“ and „jojo rabbit“, which were both really good movies.
After arriving at the hotel in New Orleans, we went to the famous Bourbon Street to get the full New Orleans experience. There were tons of people dressed up, some in very unflattering clothing, meaning too small clothing. On Bourbon Street it‘s a tradition that women flash the people on the balkonies and receive mardi gras beads in exchange. Most women of course didn‘t do it and received beads nevertheless. But I did see one woman that did flash everyone, and the weird thing about it was that her 2 little kids AND her parents were present when she did it. The people on the balkonies started throwing tons of beads at her and one of them hit me when I was passing her 😂. Then we started looking for food. We decided on going to a place that had some sandwiches and hotdogs, hoping that it would at least be edible. Turned out it wasn‘t. I ordered a hotdog and as soon as I took a bite, the oil just started squirting out of it …..
Afterwards we went back to the hotel. We were 6 people traveling together, so we had two hotel rooms, one for women, one for men. So I shared the room with my host mom and Adriana. We had only two beds, so we had to decide who got a bed on her own and who had to share. To sort it out, my host mom ripped a paper in 3 pieces, marked one with „lucky bastard“ and we all drew a paper. Adriana won and she wasn‘t exactly celebrating modestly 😉
The next day we continued our trip, but wanted to have breakfast first. We just wandered around New Orleans and found this great New York restaurant. It was very small and dark, but the food was soooooo awesome. I had cannoli pancakes and I could eat those all day long. Everybody liked the food and my host brother especially liked the meatballs that this restaurant is famous for.
After breakfast we went back to the car and drove all the way to Orlando, Florida, where we spent the next night. We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant not far from our hotel. Despite missing my sister so much (ly Mena), I got along pretty well with Luis and Nathan, besides the brotherly teasing of course 😅. Back at the hotel, my host mom, Adriana and I did the same procedure to figure out who gets her own bed, and again, Adriana won!!!! She‘s always so lucky 😄.
The next day, we conquered the last part of our trip and finally arrived in Miami. The weather was really cold and it was windy…..there goes my beach vacation….
After putting all of our stuff into the apartment that we had rented, we went for a walk in Miami and got some groceries, which wasn‘t very pleasant, since people started going crazy because of the coronavirus. But I can‘t complain, we got everything we needed. Our only problem was getting back into our apartment, since the elevators were overwhelmed with people and our apartments were on the 28th floor. But after a few…….many minutes we finally fit into an elevator.
Tuesday was our first full day in Miami. We woke up around 10 am, ate some breakfast and then decided to go to the Everglades and do the alligator boat tour. The ship for the tour was small, only about 15 people could fit. We got ear plugs to protect our ears from the loud noise of the boat and off we went. The channels were narrow at first and we saw some alligators just lying at the shore, taking advantage of the warmth of the sun. After the narrow channels there was an area with shallow water but a lot of space. The captain sped up and the boat was going so fast that it was hard to breathe. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the experience. After 30 minutes we stepped on land again and watched the little alligator show that the place provided. We all sat on benches near a small fenced area with some gators and listened as the staff talked about the animals. The man in charge of this also showed us a scorpion and a toad, which he tried to convince people to kiss in exchange for a prince 😂 …nobody did though.
After visiting the Everglades, we went to a Cuban restaurant and got dinner, followed by taking a look at south beach. There were a lot of college kids at this beach and all of them were really closely together…. corona paradise. While we were walking along the beach, Adriana and I talked about the poor bathing suit choice of some people. There were so many girls wearing wayyyyy to small bikinis and apparently fishnet shirts are trendy now 🤷♀️.
On Wednesday we finally went to the beach. Before that we got some food at a nearby restaurant though, which filled me up like crazy and made me feel really stuffed. We arrived at the beach around noon, but besides big lizards and coconuts, there wasn‘t too much to see there. The sun wasn‘t even shining, which was why I didn‘t apply any sunblock, which turns out to be a bad idea later. Despite the cloudy weather I lay on my towel and hoped to still get a little tan. Meanwhile, my host brother, 17 years old being mentioned, started digging a hole in the sand. The whole day!
After a while I was bored and decided to walk along the shore, accompanied by my host mom and Adriana, who also wanted to take a walk. When we were about two miles away from where we left our stuff, the clouds vanished and the sun started shining. It was beautiful but at this point I started to regret not having applied sunblock earlier. I burnt my thighs, arms and chest a little bit but it never hurt or peeled, which I‘m very thankful for.
After the beach we went to a little mall at the port in Miami, where we ate dinner at an Italian restaurant. The food was really good and we had a lot of fun. After a while one of us noticed a young woman at another restaurant, who never took a single bite of her food, but instead took millions of selfies with it. We were watching her for a long time and she really didn‘t eat her meal, she only took pictures with it haha…
On Thursday we went on a speed boat tour. We had to leave all electrical devices on land, since the whole purpose of the speed boat was to get wet. We were instructed to sit really closely to each other so we wouldn‘t fall off the boat. Our captain was really cool and told us a lot of interesting things about Miami and the houses that we saw. Apparently a lot of celebrities have a second house in Miami and all of them cost several million dollars. It was really impressive but I preferred the part when out captain sped up the boat and tried to splash us by turning abruptly. Looking back, the speed boat was probably my favorite thing we did in Miami.
Next, we went to a place called „little Havanna“, an area affected by Cuban culture. The buildings looked really cool, the domino park on the other hand was a disappointment. We thought it would be this huuuuuge park with all kinds of dominos to play with, but in reality it was only a little space where old people met and played domino. In the evening we ordered food from a Chinese restaurant and played a few rounds of poker. I had never played before but my host dad explained me all the rules and I didn‘t do too badly for the first time.
Dave, the dad of the Landrum family arrived on Thursday night and he immediately proposed that we should go snorkeling on Friday. Now the thing is that I don‘t really like swimming and my host mom and Adriana agreed with me. So only the guys went snorkeling on Friday, while us three went kayaking. Due to our low weight, Adriana and I had to take a kayak together. My host mom had one for herself. We rented the kayaks for one hour and the guy at the rental showed us a route on the map that we could complete in that time. Now after only a few minutes, we couldn‘t agree anymore what channel we should take next to stay on our route. I eventually gave up and we went the route my host mom told us to go. It lead us into a really narrow channel, narrow meaning about 5 feet distance between the tree branches. Adriana and I were ahead of my host mom and couldn‘t see her because the channel was very curvy. After a while we were wondering what took her so long and yelled if she was okay. All we heard as a response was laughing. Assuming she was alright we continued out path. But after another few minutes we then decided to turn around and look where she was.
We found my host mom standing on the roots of a tree, her kayak flipped over and the paddles floating several meters away from her. She told us that her kayak had got stuck and when she tried to push herself away from the trees the kayak flipped and she fell into the water. Now the problem was that at this moment she was taking pictures, so her phone had fallen into the water. She was unable to save the phone. Adriana and I helped her get on the kayak again and we continued our odyssey. My host mom was the only one that had taken her phone with her and considering that we were lost, the loss of the phone seemed more dramatic. The sun was burning and I was so scared to get a stronger sunburn. There was no way that I could have covered up or have gotten out of the sun. We were lost, but luckly we found another couple of kayakers that after a while somehow helped us to find our way back. We spent a total of 2.5 hours on the kayaks, but when we arrived back at the kayak rentals, they told us that we had made it back in time 🤷♀️.
Afterwards we went to a restaurant and got lunch with the guys. They told us the snorkeling was beautiful but they couldn‘t deny that we definitely had a better story to tell. In the evening we watched a movie together and ordered pizza. It was really cosy and I enjoyed it a lot.
On Saturday morning we left the apartment and drove all the way to Mobil, Florida. We were on the road the whole day, since we made our drive back in two days instead of three. On our way there we watched „uncut gems“ and „black panther“. Besides that we didn‘t really have anything to do, so I mostly slept during the drive.
Sunday was the almost exact same thing as Saturday. We just drove from Mobile all the way back home to Texas. On the way there we listened to songs about traveling and when I suggested the song „Roads to Rome“ from a Swiss band, everybody seemed to like it 😉
At about 6 pm we got back to Wylie. We dropped off the Landrums and went home. Looking back I really enjoyed Spring Break and I‘m glad we went to Miami.