Today we were in Miami !
We landed at 7am Florida Time in Fort Lauderdale (near Miami), after 2 and a half hours in a plane (to short to really sleep). So we were quite tired when we went through immigration and customs. But luckily, it all went quite quickly and smoothly.
As we didn’t know how much time it would take, we hadn’t booked the 8am flight to New Orleans, and the only other cheap flight available was at 10pm. So we had a whole day to spend in between. We decided to rent a car a visit Florida a bit.
Yes, I know, we rented a car instead of taking public transport. But we’ve been taking exclusivly public transport for 3 months, and we were a bit too tired to adapt to a new network. And we wanted to make sure we got back to the airport in time. Also, we didn’t want to unpack our bags.zip (see yesterday’s article), and they’re not very practical to run around with.
At first we wanted to rent a Ford Mustang, you know, do as the locals do, but as we’re in the USA, the prices are shown without tax, so we quickly turned to the cheapest solution. We first went to a diner to have breakfast, and immediately felt like we were in Pulp Fiction (too bad I left my “Bad Motherfucker” wallet back in France 😉 ). Then we went to the beach, to lie a bit in the sun.
Well they call it “the land of the free”, but not much is free here ! Parking was 2$ an hour, and only accepted small change. The shop nearby required you’d buy something if you wanted change (cheapest was a 2.5$ water bottle…). And if you wanted to set foot on the pier you had to pay 2$. Even the toll road don’t tell you you have to pay until it’s too late and you can’t go back !
So then we drove south to Miami Beach, which was actually much further than we thought. But the drive was nice, it was sunny weather and we went along the huge avenues with lots of palm trees, and old American hits were playing on the radio. It really felt like GTA (except we didn’t kill anybody, as far as I know…)!
After a late lunch and a stroll on the beach, we started to get back to the airport, but there was already a bit of traffic. Even though we avoided most of it, it felt like forever to get there. Americans are used to spend a lot of time in their cars, so when they tell you it’s near, it’s like a 2h drive, which is a lot for a French!
Near the airport we parked in a supermarket parking lot and slept like babies in the car. We could have slept at the airport, but the air conditioning is set on “freezing your balls”, and we only had our T-shirt and shorts on us! After the nap, we manage to fill the tank again (which was not an easy task, we’re not used to the American pumps), and gave the car back.
So, we landed in New Orleans near midnight, and went to see Milan, a cool friend of my brother, who very nicely let us sleep in his flat for the night.