Vice City

It's taken me a week or so to recover from my trip, which was fabulous and strange and full of crazy hijinks...okay, not really, but it felt that way at times.

Miami: it was bloody hot, with an average in the 90s (35C for us Canucks) every day. The cab ride into the South Beach strip felt like something straight out of playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Minus the big hair of the 80's, it looked exactly like the video game, right down to the half-naked people strolling up and down the strip.

It was surreal. Pastel-colored buildings dominate the strip, with Art Deco facades that came straight out of the 50s/80s. Most of these buildings house hotels/restaurants/bars/lounges on the front, with rooms above. We stayed at the Whitelaw Hotel, one street up from the strip. Even with the "quietest" (i.e. farthest from the lobby) room, it was a noisy, drunken Saturday night. (For everyone else, not us. We like sleep and my traveling companions, curse you all, like to wake up at 6:30 a.m. to run--like this chick in Vice City screenshot below.)

ALL of these hotels/restaurants play dance music. Every. Freakin'. Hour. Of. The. Day. I tell ya, I've never had eggs and sausage to the gut-bouncing rhythm of techno until now.

We spent some time shopping--okay, we spent LOTS of time shopping--at which point I realized my comfy leather flipflops were in fact my torturous flesh-rending flipflops. I have two lovely chunks of flesh missing now from the tops of my feet and a new pair of flipflops now.

The best day spent was on the beach, where we rented chairs ($10 apiece) and an umbrella ($12) and lay in the sun and soaked in the salty surf. Saltwater is rather painful in fresh wounds, I've learned. I was kinda waiting for a shark to swim up over the sandbar to start nibbling on my gooey feet, but all I ended up with was sand in my bikini bottom (mmm, gritty).

The South Beach strip is really a party strip where guys go to ogle the pretty ladies in their boobtastic finery, while the girls go to ogle the tanned beach bums displaying their carefully airbrushed abs. It's not a family place, so don't bother staying on the strip unless your intention is to drink your face off and wake up next to some guy named Chad or Chet or Gage.

Said bimbos, both of the male and female persuasion, seem intent on cruising in stealtacular Hummers, convertibles, and fancy-schmancy vehicles along Ocean Avenue. Though it makes for a good spectacle, all I could think was a) how can anyone possibly afford the gas to go cruising these days? and b) how did anyone ever manage to hijack anything in GTA:VC with all the traffic and cops around?

(Obviously, I was distracted by the the realism of Vice City. They really got it down to a T, though. I will never doubt the video game makers at Rockstar again.)

I'm snipping this post and will write more about the cruise later.