The Sunshine State

The beautiful Miami sky

After spending three days at sea with about two days of bad weather, we are finally back to the Sunshine State! Our cruise got back to the Port of Miami at 7 am. Right before we got off, we exchanged our contact information with our friends.

We left with Simona and her two brothers, who were apparently staying at the same hotel as us until tomorrow. I was surprised, since they didn't come with their parents either. So in a sense, we sort of had a connection there and we didn't expect that to happen at all. We decided that we will go to the airport together and say goodbye there as they leave for Italy and us for Peru.

When we got to our hotel, we checked in right away and went to our rooms. We got room 317 and they got room 312. Luckily, we were on the same floor. We then went straight to the indoor swimming pool, where we played some pool sports, such as volleyball and basketball together in teams. As usual, after our swim we were all quite hungry. So we changed and went to eat together at a local restaurant.

Miami Beach

We also brought them to the mall, since they didn't get a chance to see Miami a lot and they wanted to do some shopping for their family. We came back a bit early to get a chance to take a few hours' nap, because once we get to Peru, we won't really have much time for that. Then we all headed to the beach for another swim. This time though, we made a sand castle and unlike when we were back at the hotel, we actually spent more time on the beach than in the water.

On our way to the hotel after spending a long time at the beach

The beach wasn't as packed as I was expecting. But then again, I guess people like to tan more during the peak times of the day, from around 12 to 4 pm. The five of us were happy though, because we went a bit crazy and just ran around the beach. Simona's brother had two nerf water guns, so we split into two teams and played a game of sand tag, which we all invented.

Downtown Miami

Then at night, Simona, Joseph and Michael came over to our room after we came back from Downtown Miami, which is where we basically spent a good portion of the night: having dinner, watching a movie in theatres, going bowling, going window shopping, etc. We ordered some pizza, watched a movie and played some board games. They left at around 2 am, and after cleaning up the room and packing our last minute things, we went to bed and set our alarm for an early time tomorrow morning.

It is actually our last Good Morning America tomorrow and I'm not sure how the rest is going to turn out, but so far, everything is good...