shal, pearl, and i left sfo thurs night and arrived in miami around 9am. we had a layover in atlanta. the flights over were uneventful, but i basically got zero sleep on the plane.
when we got off the plane, we had to rush to go catch the free hotel shuttle which comes every odd hour. when we got outside, it was nice and steamy, felt like walking into an oven. we asked some airport dude if the hotel shuttle had left yet, and he said the shuttle didn't start running until 11. so we were like...oh ok, i guess we have to catch a cab. jody arrived at 9am as well, but at a different terminal, so we were waiting for her to meet us. as we were waiting for her, we see the hotel shuttle pull up. good thing we had to wait for jody or else we probably would have already left to take the taxi! anyways, so we got to the shuttle and asked if he could wait for our friend who was coming right now. jody's terminal was pretty far from the shuttle stop but she walked fast and our driver was nice and was willing to wait.
when we got to the hotel, we wanted an early check-in to our room but they said it would cost $40. since the four of us were dead tired, we decided to just pay $40 so we could take a nap. the hotel room was very minimalistic, and the bathroom was very small. it was pretty good for the price. we slept til around 1, 1:30 and by that time, nancy had arrived ! so we decided to go have lunch and go to the beach afterwards. our hotel was in a pretty nice location, middle of south beach, 2 blocks from the beach, walking distance to many things. we ate at a cuban restaurant puerta sagua, which had good food, very big portions. it felt like we were in costa rica again cause it was rice and beans! once we were stuffed, we walked to the beach and rented an umbrella. we had a lot of fun lounging around and playing in the water. the water was soooo warm and nice. it was so refreshing to be in the water instead of sitting on the beach in the hot and muggy weather. the clouds were starting to loom overhead and around 4:30 everyone was vacating the beach cause it was going to start to rain soon. we had stayed about 1.5 - 2 hours and i already had a tan. the sun is very very strong there, and i only needed a couple of hours to start turning darker. anyways, as we were walking back to the hotel, sharon called and said had landed and would see us soon!
we went back to the hotel and all took showers to clean our sticky bodies from the sweat and sand. after we were done, sharon arrived! it took us a looooong time to decide where to eat dinner. we went back and forth and finally decided to go to opa, a greek restaurant. a cool thing about the hotel we were staying at was that there is open bar every night 7-8pm, so at 7 we went downstairs to get some drinks. i had a vodka cranberry and a screwdriver. we started our night out well and off to opa we went. the restaurant was only about half full when we got there. pearl and i went to the restroom and when we came back there were napkins EVERYWHERE and the music was VERY loud. we were like...what the heck happened?? i guess it was time to get the party started! they had two bellydancers come out and they danced on the guest's tables. my friends kept on trying to convince me to dance on the tabletops (since other people were doing it, but it was either 1) they were dancing with a group of people or 2) they were dancing with the belly dancer. the belly dancer did not come to our table and i was NOT going to go up on the table and dance randomally on the table by myself. while the belly dancers were dancing, they would throw napkins around, i'm not sure why, i thought that was kinda strange.
so we ordered our food and enjoyed the entertainment. there was one bellydancer in red that was really really good, it was fun watching people dance with her. shal and i shared a mojito during dinner, and in the middle of dinner sharon, shal, jody and i decided to try a shot of ouzo ( i had no idea what it was, all we knew was that it was some kind of alcohol that you drink with greek food). we took the shot and it was SOOOOO gross it tasted like licorice and was the worst thing EVER! yuck!! when we were done with dinner, they cleared our table and by that time, the bellydancers were on break. of course the alcohol had now taken effect on those that drank, so my friends kept on trying to convince me to dance on the table. i said i wouldn't dance unless someone went up with me. so finally shal and jody agreed to dance with me, so we all got on the table and started dancing! it was kind of embarrassing because we were the only ones on the table and now the restaurant was pretty full, i could see everyone watching us. but i guess we got the party started cause many other people started dancing on the tables as well! once other people were doing it as well, i didn't feel so weird. all of my friends eventually went up on the table to dance with me, yay, we had a lot of fun. we had another round of shots while we were on the table, i have no idea what it was. the waiter had come around and asked us if we wanted another shot of ouzo, we ALL vehemently shouted NO! so they came out with a different alcohol which was very sweet and pretty good. eventually the belly dancers came back out (i think they took like an hour break or something), the belly dancer in red was dancing on the table next to us that was connected to ours. my friends first made me put a dollar in her skirt and THEN made me go up and dance with her. so i danced a little and went back down =) we had a lot of fun, but the loud music was starting to get to us, so we decided to leave.
the plan was to go back to the hotel and wait for alice to arrive around 11:30. when we got back to the hotel we started losing our buzz and getting really sleepy and tired. those from ca were especially tired cause we took the redeye and didn't get much sleep. when alice arrived, she wanted to go out, so we decided to go check out one of the nice hotel's lounge. it was a pretty far walk and we got really hot and sweaty. the lounge was really nice but i think we were all pretty dead (except for alice) and didn't really feel like having another drink, so we just sorta sat there and looked around. since we were so tired and weren't going to be much fun, we decided to just go back and rest, plus we had to wake up early for our everglades tour the next day. we took a cab back home and went to sleep.
(hmm, this looks like this might take a long time...)
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