Day 5 – ‘I’m in Miami Beach’

Ok so I changed the last word of that famous song lyric (this is a family friendly blog after all) but it still rings true. For the next four days we are truly in Miami Beach. And yes all the stereotypes are true. Golden sand, golden gorgeous people and glistening lukewarm (and very salty) water. But to get to the sun, surf and sand of South Beach (or SoBe) we had to spend most of day 5 heading South down the East Coast of the USA.

6am. Wake up and jump on two subway trains and a bus to Pearson International. Amazingly this simple trip only costs $3- surely the cheapest airport transfer in the world.

10.45am. We are due to be on a plane. In actual fact we are sprint walking to gate B18 after baggage weight problems, huge queues at US border customs and confusion over whether our J1 visa will let us out of Canada without forking out $14 for an ESTA. Stevo and I make the plane fine and we take off into the blue skies of Toronto and zoom southwards.

2pm. The plane touches down at Miami International airport and as we get off the plane the heat hits us. 33 degrees outside and bright sunshine. The supershuttle takes us all the way to the front door of our residence for the next four nights.

And what a residence. Awarded ‘Best Hostel in the USA’ in the last two years, Miami Beach International Travelers Hostel is quite simply what every party-focused hostel should be like. Free breakfast, lunch and dinner, cheap beer, amazing deals to get us into the biggest clubs in the city, clean rooms and the best atmosphere that we could have hoped for. We checked in and found that they had upgraded us to a private double bed room for free. After unpacking we walked the 50 yards or so to the most famous beach in America- South Beach Miami. The water is almost too warm but apart from that it’s just perfect. And the people there aren’t far from physical perfection either.

We chilled at the beach for two hours and then headed back for dinner and to get ready for the night ahead. Dinner was chicken wings and rice (better than the food at camp) and the alcohol is cheap for America. As I mentioned earlier, MBITH (they really should add a C inbetween the T and H to complete the famous lyrics), is a party hostel and we were encouraged to pre-drink before those old enough to do so were taken to one of the biggest clubs in SoBe, Cameo. Unfortunately Miami seems to be stricter on ID than most American cities and we had to resort to drinking in the hostel and heading out only for a late night slice of pizza before bed.