Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Miami Beach, Baby!

Ford and I planned this trip to visit Peter, but Ford could take a whole week off, whereas I only took one day. After they picked me up from the Orlando airport, we ate at a Chipotle, wandered around a mall where I bought $100 Ray-Bans, and then went on our way to Miami.

The traffic was heavy. We blasted loud club music, all with our sunglasses on and bopping our heads like cool college students from the movies. It was dark when we got there, so we found a hotel last minute while eating at Denny's. That was a panicked process of Googling local hostels and hotels, as well as making phone calls. I won Peter a stuffed animal - there was a claw machine in the restaurant. Then we drove to downtown, parked in a shanty lot and went to explore. We were in a Latino bar for a while, and then moved to another one where we drank sangria. After wandering a little more and finding little activity, we got lost going back to the shanty lot. We found it in time - was anyone watching the lot anyway? - and went back to the hotel.

Miami beach was our next destination. We hit the water under the beautiful hot sun immediately. I was in a pink flowery band bikini. Then we took a shower under one of the free fresh water sources around the boardwalk. There was a park, and a lot of fancy restaurants, and we went inside an art gallery. It had different artistic renditions of celebrities. I shopped for some souvenirs, too. We ate at a burger place before trying to hit Mokai the club, but apparently we were out of dress code, so we went in Baoli instead.

This club/restaurant/bar is quite something. There were two large rooms in dim lighting with the host's station in the middle. At opposite ends of this large rectangle were two disc jockey platforms, playing trance music to seated people eating highly priced comfort foods and drinking alcohol. When I was halfway through my French styled broccoli and cheese soup, two female dancers wearing animal print bikini-ish costumes with heavy feather headdresses came out to dance. They moved on two platforms connecting the four cubic columns on three sides in front of the DJ platform. I don't know if she was otherwise a stripper, but those are hot asses.

While they were dancing, a bar off to the far side let some guests with drinks get up and dance. The bartender was mixing drinks while playing with fire. After around 9 o'clock, the waitstaff cleared tables and moved them out of the way for dancers whenever they could. Soon Peter, Ford and I joined them. We stayed there for a few hours. Every so often, one of the DJs would spray fire extinguisher smoke over the dancers so we'd cool down several degrees and then warm up from movement again.

When we went back to the car, we found that the car wouldn't start. Peter had to call triple A, then we waited until he came and helped us start it back up. The rest was history.