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| Day 17 - Sunday 23rd May. Palm Beach & Atlanta |
| 07.08.04 (4:32 pm) [edit] |
We managed to get out of the hotel just in time for checkout and not feeling top of the pops found a good ol American diner for some greasy replenishment. I never got used to American drip filter coffee, so damn bitter it’s like drinking public school teacher’s coffee of choice, International Roast. But I was willing to slam down anything to get my head and body back in sync. We went down the beach for another good 3 hours and then headed up to the Palm Beach area. Running out of time quickly I took a lot of drive by shots of the area. Then went up to Lake Worth beach area. Before I knew it I was in the Palm Beach airport heading home (well temporary home). I had a connection at Atlanta, Georgia. Supposedly one of the largest airports in the US, people had warned me how easy it is to get lost. The airport was packed full of weekender’s like me and it took quite a while to catch the subway that runs under the airport to get over to the other terminal. Each terminal has it’s own mall area with food court etc, absolutely massive place.
I had some unlicensed cabbies trying to sucker me in the DC airport, there’s ppl trying to screw you over everywhere I went, glad I can spot dodgy pricks. I got a licensed cab no worries and arrived home at 2am Monday morning. Another great start to the working week
:wink:
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| Day 16 - Saturday 22nd May. Miami Beach |
| 07.08.04 (4:23 pm) [edit] |
After getting about 6 hours sleep we headed down the interstate to the Miami beach area. Miami drivers are probably the worst I have seen in the US, there was quite a lot of luck that we didn’t get caught up in an accident. Again with no maps of the area we drove down Washington and Collins ave in south beach trying to find a park with no success. All of the café’s and restaurants on the strip all have exclusively valet parking out the front, very strange seeing it’s just curb-side parking, but if you’re a movie star with a H2 Hummer then I guess you’d go for that.
After finding a park next to the crusty hotel where we were staying, we heading down to the beach for a good couple of hours. With all the people on the beach there was probably on about a 10th of those in the water, probably because there is prty much no surf, it’s just a big tanning session. Seeing the sun doesn’t go down till about 8:30pm there’s plenty of time to spend on the beach. It was in the high 90’s with low humidity, perfect weather plus the UV doesn’t seem that extreme so I got a whole weekend in the sun with no roasty toasty, one downside of Australia I guess.
We headed down Collins ave and found a fairly cheap irish restaurant to eat at, Miami is definitely not a cheap place to stay, restaurants and alcohol is quite expensive compared to other areas. After getting back to the hotel we headed down to the Clevelander on Collins ave with an outdoor bar area as well as a pool in the middle prty sweet place, very touristy. We went for a walk and stumbled across this club called Hotel Astor, turned out to be ‘the’ place for locals, it was a converted old art deco hotel. I have the suspicion we got back at to the hotel at 5am, not such a smart thing to do seeing we were only there for 2 days.
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| Day 15 - Friday 21st May. Fort Lauderdale |
| 07.08.04 (4:19 pm) [edit] |
After much fussin’, ums and ahhs I finally got my Canon powershot s410 to take some much better pictures than the 6 dollar disposable I got from the local Giant supermarket. After getting lost on the way to the airport in DC (no it wasn’t me, I can read maps) we found some helpful locals in a servo who pointed us in the right way, again another great reason to leave for an airport at least an extra hour than you need (yes Brendan, you know what I’m talking about : )
I’ve gotten used to the US Airport security lines (they are horrendous) and each time I go thru it’s belt and shoes off otherwise another 10 mintues wasted with security. Very easy to spot the tourists from the regular US flyers in that regard. Landed in ft Lauderdale around 12:20am Saturday and picked up by Baz. He had just about as much knowledge about the area as I did so we did a bit of random adventure driving until we found a few bars along the beach. This one place we went to had 3 for 1 drinks which kinda explained the chicks outside throwing up everywhere.
After a few bars we decided to head back to Baz’s crib in Palm beach to crash out before heading down to south beach.
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| Day 8 - 14th May. Georgetown |
| 06.08.04 (1:14 pm) [edit] |
Headed into Georgetown for guy from work's gf's birthday. While driving into georgetown our driver got pulled up by a cop for making an illegal right turn, but got let of just because he used to live in the same apartment building as her, very weird, but no-one was complaining. Went into Nathan's, a fairly small pub on M street. After a few there we headed to another bar with a wide array of spirits. The bouncers were having real trouble looking for my birthday on an australian drivers licence, one just gave up and let me through which is quite lucky, taking passport is always good backup.
The guy from work decided to challenge my boss and I to a drinking challenge. Of course we both agreed and started drinking makers mark for 4$ which is damn cheap. My boss kinda out did herself and ended up having a nice yak in the toilets, birthday girl went in to keep an eye on her and ended up with yak on her nice black dress, it was hilarious. Some of the guys decided to send her home and we went into a local club in some backstreet, the toilets are amazingly small compared to the size of the clubs, the one at nathan's looked like a strip club with full mirrors on each wall and black paint on the rest. Everyone got on the dancefloor and before we knew it birthday girl was turning into the next casualty of the nite. The bouncers were moving in and we quickly realised it was time to get out of there, it wasn't much of a classy place anyway for a $5 cover.
After dropping a few ppl off I finally got home at 4am, kinda sucks living 30 miles out of DC in the burbs, really makes drinking difficult. But when the blood alcohol level is .08 it's not so bad :)
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| Day 4 - 7th May. First day of work and First all american bar |
| 05.26.04 (12:01 pm) [edit] |
After meeting everyone at the company and doing a bit work, I was off to the local bar (or more precisely the Buffalo Wing Factory). This is popular with the work guys for 2 obvious reasons 39c buffalo wings and very cheap pints (about 2.50 for any of the 20 beers on tap). The buffalo wings are awesome, absolutely drowned in hotsauces, there?s about 15 types and one called the flatliner that you are required to sign a waiver for.
It?s your typical local bar, full of TVs playing every sports channel available (great for me seeing nba playoffs are on).
Fosters was on tap, and for some reason there's a nasty rumor about aussies loving fosters, so I felt it was my duty to set them straight.
Corona is cheap as, Samuel Adams summer ale was great, Foggy Bottom Ale is a local made in Foggy Bottom (part of DC), not so great. I dont mind Miller Draft, but all those lites (bud, miller, coors) taste like nothing.
After trying at least 10pints of the different beers, I was feeling well trashed, nothing like going to work with a hangover :wink:
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