The Ending, Part 2 - I Was In Miami B****

"...Party in the city where the heat is on
All night on the beach till the break of dawn

Welcome to Miami and Bienvenido a Miami

Bouncin' in the club where the heat is on

All night on the beach till the break of dawn

I'm going to Miami, welcome to Miami..."

...thats what Will Smith said as we came in over the

bridge on 41st St and turned on Collins Avenue and Miami t

ook our breaths away. We were finally there, Oh God had we been waiting for this!

Already sweating, sunny, palms, summer breeze, shorts, skirts, the smell of the ocean -

Jacksonville was great but Miami was about to be better!!

We didnt have any reservations here in Miami, so the first thing we did was park our SUVs and the went straight to AppleStore. LM bought an iPad, Lars bought an iPad and Runa bought two

macs and while they did that i checked out some hostels and motels in the area.

We called a few places but they were fully booked. My friend Linda from school was staying in Miami for 3-4 more days, and i knew she was staying at Clay Hotel&Hostel, so we figured out we could give it a shot and Guess what; we got ourselves a 12-bed dorm! NICE!

The dorm was kinda stinky but we could live here for a bit! Haha.. Linda stayed in a girl-dorm right under us and we all hung out with her several times before she headed for a cruise to Bahamas!

I have to say, living together, 8 people (soon 9), in a small dorm; it looked pretty much like this:

Clay Hotel's location is right on the corner of Espanola Way and Collins Ave, right in the center of South Beach; Everything was right before us, shopping, clubs, the beach. Oh, can we stay here forever?

We came to Miami on the 8th of July and our stay was very chilled. The first or second day people went to see downtown, while me and Lars just hung out in the area.

Runa met her friend from her exchange-year in Australia, Raquel from Mexico. She was the 9th person to stay in our dorm.

Other days everyone did their own things and then we usually hung out together in the evenings. Heres a pic from when we all ate together at a Italian restaurant in our street.

And another funny pic. We were planning on going out this night, but most of us werent in the mood except for Runa, Raquel and Linda really. So they went to this beach thing and had fun!

The girls went out a few times. I joined once together with the rest, trying to get in to Mansion once - one of the hottest clubs in Miami. Unfortunately, the security was also the hottest; Not letting me in. Oops.

Me, Lars and Linda went on to another club, Love/Hate, owned by Ami from Miami Ink for you who dont know who he is. Of course on that saturday he didnt decide to show up!

The club was very characterized with different tattoo-drawings by the artists over at the tattoo-studio. Pretty much amazing. The DJ was also great!

Heres a link to a picture gallery of the club from the inside:

http://www.lovehatemiami.com/index.cfm?page=gallery

Another night some of us went out on Ocean Drive, the famous ArtDeco street in South Beach. I dont remember the club's name but it was very fun!

We all slowly started to part. Magnus, Mats and Kristoffer were going to New York city, Torgeir was going home on another vacation with his girlfriend and Runa and LM were going home to Norway, via Germany and England.

Before everyone split up, we got to experience something sooo cool. During the FIFA World Cup, we lived, like i said, on Espanola Way. You cant even imagine the excitement in that street as Spain won over the Netherlands!!

People were screaming and dancing and the atmosphere was out of this world, im Serious!

Ive Never seen or been through any thing like it, it was just SO amazing to see the joy in peoples faces and to just be there and experience the happiness!

A man also decided to celebrate by climbing a palm!

So thats about it from the long trip! It has finally come to an end. Well it ended a long time ago, so its more about me finally ending it on the blog. Sorry.. But here it is, and i hope you've all enjoyed reading about our journey!:)

USA Roadtrip 2010 has officially ended!

- vic -

The Ending, Part 1 - Finally Florida

Soooo sorry for not posting this one earlier, but here it is!

Our goals in Atlanta werent that much, only to be in a place, a big place, to celebrate the 4th of July. It sure is a huge city, but we didnt see much of it. We came in on Saturday night and just chilled and Sunday we relaxed again before heading to Stone Mountain Park to celebrate the 4th of July! We were all really tired cause of the long roadtrip and were actually looking forward to it to end, even though we knew it was going to be sad.

We took a taxi towards the park and everything was fine, but then there were waaayyy to many cars wanting to enter the park. So we got out of the taxi cause we didnt want to spend money on just waiting, and thought we could get in by foot, but then we were stopped by a guard telling us that we simply cant enter without a car. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!?

Luckily there was a pickup waiting in line right next to us and the two gentlemen driving it were nice enough to let us tailgate so we could get inside! Haha! We got a lot of weird looks...

When we got to the park we found a restaurant at a hotel almost straight away and there was a buffet with so much good stuff (God, do we like buffets!), and so we dug in. After a nice dinner and very nice dessert(s) we went downstairs to the bar and started our journey to space once again and then headed out to the hotel garden as a laser-show and the fireworks were about to begin.

First of, the laser-show was amazing!!! On the mountain wall, there were carvings of three persons riding horses, some historical thing, and the lasers made animated pictures and a show of the history of the three riders. It was veery cool, ive never seen a lasershow like that.

Over to the fireworks; Ive Never seen anything like it. We don't have that kind of firework in Norway, no way! If im not mistaken i remember a UFO and a smiley too? It was so amazing and cool. (there will be pics of the same kinda fireworks later...)

We left Atlanta with more patriotism in our minds and headed for Jacksonville. All we new

about Jax was that we would finally see the ocean again and the

white sand embracing the coast of Florida. When we got there, it was Exactly like that…!

We came into town in the evening. The sun had just set and had painted beautiful colors in the horisont and we parked our cars and Ran down to the beach. It was magical! We had waited So_Long for this and when we finally felt the sand between our toes and the water splashing on our legs, Nothing needed to be said. Just; Finally.

We stayed in Jacksonvile for 4 days i think. We stayed just outside of downtown and had to drive every day to Jax Beach(es). We basically hung out on the beach every day and then went downtown in the evening or just hung out in the motel. One night we ate at a fine restaurant downtown. This was in the dining district The Jacksonville Landing. A great area down by the water with beautiful view to the famous bridge in blue.

On the beach on day we rented surfboards!!

This was a highly anticipated activity that we had talked about for a loong time and that we had agreed on doing in Miami, but then we couldn't wait, so we did it in Jax. The condition for surfing was beyond perfect, big waves (not huge); perfect to get a great surf-experience. Runa was the only one who had surfed before (in Australia) but Lars managed to stand up on the board the first time he tried too! (I think someone else made it too, but i dont remember who, sorry!)

Me not so much, but i did get up after a long struggle with the waves!

So surfing was GREAT, its definitely a sport that both me and Lars agreed on that we would like to be doing as a hobby!

So now we were finally back by the ocean in the final state; it really felt incredible after everything we had been through, driving trough _18_ states! Our next stop was going to be…. Disneyworld?

- vic -