Miami, the Third

At last, the long-awaited third part of the Miami trilogy. Here goes ...

I believe I left off on Tuesday, after our afternoon giddiness. That night, we had planned once again to meet up with the L.A. boys (aka our cruise directors) at Hotel Astor, which was purported to be the hot spot on Tuesday nights. So we got dressed to the nines, and after a delicious dinner at a local Cuban place, we headed over there. However, unbeknownst to us, Hotel Astor had recently changed hands and was no longer the happenin' place it used to be. We arrived at the bar just as it was closing up, but the bartender, noting that we were meeting the large group eating dinner in the attached restaurant, took our drink orders anyway. We caught the attention of our friends, and they immediately went to work securing us a good time that evening. Somehow they were able to convince the new owners/managers to keep the place open for us provided we fill it up to the best of our ability. I'm not sure if we necessarily accomplished that task, but they fulfilled their end of the bargain and we hung out there for a good portion of the evening. I ended up meeting many more of the interesting characters traveling with this group of "industry" folks, all of whom were very fun and friendly and happy to just whoop it up with some random ladies (us) they met along the way. Our next stop was Mansion, which apparently everyone has heard of, except me. Now, perhaps I was drunk (no doubt about it, actually), but it seemed to me like we just waltzed right into this club, skirting the line entirely, because one of the people we were with sprung for a VIP room. I'm positive about the VIP room part, but not about the walking in ahead of people part. Anyhoo, I think there may have been some kind of party going on that night too, like for VH1 or something, but again, the whiskey makes things a little cloudy. :) (p.s. I swear I'm not an alkie!) But regardless, we danced the rest of the night away at Mansion and had a rollicking good time. That is, until I LOST MY CAMERA'S MEMORY CARD!!! I was handing my camera to someone to take a picture, and I dropped it. I noticed that the batteries had popped out, so I grabbed them up and put them back in, but couldn't get the camera to work after that. I guess I just thought I put the batteries in wrong or something, because I dismissed the matter and put the camera back in my purse. But after I got home (i.e. to the hotel), I tried it again, and it gave me the message that there was no memory card! Gnaaaghhh! Having no hope, I called the club several times to see if anyone had found it, but no luck. I lost ALL my pictures from the trip, as well as everything I had taken since mid-October. I was crushed. But luckily, I have very nice friends who promised they'd share their pics with me. :) Also, at Mansion, J met some random dude who said he had extra Super Bowl tickets and wanted her to go with him!! No way could he have been for real, but it was certainly fun to dream about the possibility for a minute or two. People kept asking us why we didn't extend our stay through the weekend of the game, and we definitely considered it, but when you think about it, what would have been the point if we didn't have tickets? We'd just end up at some bar watching the game anyway, like we'd be doing if we were at home. The only fun thing would be actually being there for the partying afterwards. However, as I'm sure everyone is already aware, our Chicago boys lost anyway, so it would have been bittersweet. So no big loss.

Oh! I almost forgot! The hookers! On our way out of Mansion that night, there was this group of women who, for some unknown reason, were hugging us as we came out of the building. It seemed a little odd, but I didn't really think anything of it until ... J and I got into a cab to go back to the hotel, and one of the guys we were with, we'll call him Keith, leaned into the window to pay the cabbie for our fare home. As he did so, one of the hugging women (though I did not actually see this happen), came up behind him, reached around, and grabbed him *ahem* you-know-where. A minute later, he's yelling, "Who took my money? Where's my money?" I guess it was at this point that the cabbie drove away to take us home. But HE had seen the whole thing and knew exactly what these women were doing, which he proceeded to explain to us. Apparently, they grab a man's you-know-what, which according to the cabbie, "leaves his backside wide open," not to mention distracts him to the point that he wouldn't notice he was being robbed, and they take his wallet right out of his back pocket! Unbelievable! Telling us this got the cabbie all riled up, and had J and I rolling with laughter in the backseat. We felt incredibly bad for Keith, who had been nothing but nice the whole night, but you gotta admit, the technique is pretty genius. :)

So that was our last night in Miami. On Wednesday, we hopped a bus (FYI, we learned the hard way that you need to flag down the buses in Miami or they won't stop for you!), which happened to be the wrong bus, down to South Beach one last time for lunch at the same Cuban place we'd gone to the night before. We just had to have Cuban sandwiches, and had been told that they'd have tres leches that day. We were disappointed that they did NOT, in fact, have any tres leches, but the sandwiches were very good. I can't remember if it was Tuesday or Wednesday, but one of those days, when we were walking down the boardwalk, looking at all the Super Bowl tents and press areas and what have you, we ran into Deion Sanders taping something. That was pretty cool ... even though we had to ask someone who it was. :) The rest of the day was basically spent shopping (I got some sunglasses and a pretty silver cuff bracelet made out of an antique tablespoon) and taking one last look around Miami Beach before we headed back to cold, cold Chicago. And man, was it cold when we got back! The first couple days were absolutely depressing. I wanted to turn around and fly right back!

But anyway, the trip was a wonderful success (despite J getting a stress fracture in her foot after the marathon/crazy dancing, which she confirmed after she got home), and the three of us have all professed an interest in doing it again next year. Or maybe if J decides to run the marathon in Hawaii ...