A Spontaneous Trip Always Ends in Crazy Golf

Miami has been awesome and we've met some really awesome people whilst being here. You may remember me mentioning the two northern lads we met (they've since told me that they prefer to be referred to as 'East Midlanders' so I apologise for any offence caused lads) and they had headed up to Orlando. Paige and I really wanted to go to Harry Potter World at Universal Studios so the two of us and our other Brit buddy Callum decided to get a car and drive over there to meet them. En route to their living quarters we stopped for a round of crazy golf (as you do). I'm rubbish at this game as I don't really have the patience for it and it was quite possibly the hottest weather ever to be playing an 'active' sport. But we persevered and I ended up in 2nd place wohoo! I won't tell you who came last as that wouldn't be fair but their name rhymes with Sage.....anywho, we then went to meet the boys (Garry and Christian are their northern names) and continued in the general Miami theme and played drinking games including Ride The Bus. Quite possibly the best drinking game ever! But 3 litres of wine and a couple crates of beer later it was time to call it a night for the Harry Potter fun that lied ahead.......

Drink, Beach, Drink, Beach, Drink

The title of this post really explains what Paige and I have been doing since being in Miami! I've had time to blog over the last couple of days but there hasn't really been much to report as all we've been doing is drinking and sunbathing! We're counting Miami as our 'vacation' whilst on vacation....if that makes sense! The hostel we're in is awesome and we've met lots of fellow Brits who like to play drinking games as much as we do! A couple of northern lads thought us to play 'Ride the Bus' which is our new favourite game. Bottles of gin and margharita's have definitely been abused in Miami so far. And I'm sure it will continue much the same for the rest of our time here. I have met a lot of lookalike's in Miami including a Danny from McFly, Ricky Gervais, Rhys D'Arby, Macauley Culkin and Danny Cipriani (lots of spelling errors there!). The beach is a stone's throw away from where we're staying and I've even been in the sea every day! And I hate the sea! But there's next to no seaweed and the waves are amazing so I'm really enjoying it. We're talking about taking a trip to Orlando to go to Harry Potter World so I'll keep you posted if we end up doing that. Sorry this hasn't been as interesting a post of some of the others but Miami has only consisted of drink, beach, drink, beach, drink.......

Stalking Elvis

Today was a very surreal day. We decided to go to Sun Studio's and do the tour of where Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis etc started their careers in the blueessss. The tour guide was brill and I learnt a lot about the history of blues music (none of which I can remember now) and we got to pose with a microphone that Elvis had once used! How cool huh.....joking aside, there were loads of great artifacts and historic points to the studios and it was very interesting. After that, Paige, Eve (our new Irish friend) and I went over to Graceland. Now, I'm not a massive Elvis fan but it was pretty awesome stalking around his house and the audio tour was brilliant. I learnt a lot about the history of Elvis (again not much I can remember other than he died on 16th Aug, 1977, starred in 31 movies, spent $250,000 on a plane then $800,000 modifying it and he recorded his first track for just $4!) and it was an amazing insight into what life was really like for him. But I have never taken so many boring photo's of a guy's life who I'm not that interested in!! So I've posted a few like of Elvis's living room (complete with stained glass peacocks) and the picture of him and Priscilla on their wedding day which I quite liked. Oh and his favourite of his cars was his pink Cadillac which I'm sure says it all! The last thing you see on the Graceland tour is his grave which is also next to his parents and grandmothers.....was bizarre to see and quite chilling. If you're in Memphis though I'd defo recommend doing it. Money well spent (even though I've probably not sold it to you very well - you'd never know I was a PR eh!). After a day full to the brim of Elvis facts, we went for some amazing BBQ food at B.B. King's restaurant which was insanely amazing. And then being the saddo's that we are (I blame Eve entirely for the rest of the evening's activities) we went to TGI Fridays and made them put MTV on so we could watch the last ever episode of The Hills as we didn't get MTV in our hostel!! So we sat in there with $4 margs and watched 3 hours of The Hills and The City finale's!! Yes, we were that sad but it was soooo worth it! Fly to Miami in a few hours so I guess I should get some sleep now....

A Memphis Thunderstorm agghhhh!

It has been raining in Memphis for hours! Never seen a storm like it! And can I just say, I'm not one of the one's screaming......

Line Dancing the Night Away

After Vegas we drove back to LA to drop off the car then caught a flight to Nashville. It was chucking it down with rain when we arrived but that didn't dampen our spirits. We got to our hostel which is very musical themed (as you can see by the Beatles painting above) but it's pretty cool. We walked down to Centennial Park in the evening as they were having an outdoor big band dance! It was so awesome. There were loads of people there dancing the waltz, rhumba, polka and cha cha cha! Paige was begging me to dance for ages but I wasn't having any of it......until they started line dancing! So we got involved in some of that and then carried on with our own interpretations of some of the dances.....was good fun though! Today we wondered into Downtown Nashville in the blistering heat (Paige and I definitely got our sweat on during that walk!) and managed to watch the World Cup Final before going exploring some amazing little venues. We watched a guy sing acoustic country music and he was pretty good. The Grand Ole Opry was closed due to the flooding which was a shame so we didn't get a chance to go. We then headed to the Wildhorse Saloon which was absolutely incredible! They were having line dancing lessons followed by a band, followed by line dancing lessons, followed by a band and the night continued like that! So Paige and I got fully involved and learnt loads of dances and it was soooooo much fun! We're definitely thinking of taking it up when we get back to the UK (don't judge us!). We also played some pool and air hockey (I won everything so as you can see from the pics above Paige was in the zone and I was of course a gracious winner!) and posed with lots of fake 'country' horses which they had all over the place! The band were pretty cool, very Billy Ray Cyrus but they did do a cover of Weezer's 'Beverly Hills' which I loved. When we left it was chucking it down with rain again so our 'mac in a pack' definitely came in handy (thanks Mum!). Off to Memphis tomorrow morning which we're well excited for. Uh huh huh........

Waking Up in Vegas

After our disasterous journey to get there, Vegas turned out to be awesome! There was never any doubt in my mind though as I love it there. We went for a stroll around some of the hotels when we got there including the Venitian, Treasure Island and the Palazzo. Did a little bit of gambling and as you can see I got a big win from the first slot machine I went on! Last of the big spenders me. The following day we booked tickets for a Playboy comedy night at the Palms....more about that later. So in the day we went to watch the dancing fountains at the Bellagio, ate dinner in Ceasers Palace (check out the amazing restaurant with the white cut outs and goldfish above), strolled around the Mirage and generally just kept popping into different casinos as it was so unbearably hot (there were a few moments when I didn't think Paige was going to make it!!). We then went to walk to the Palms from the strip but we weren't allowed down the road for some reason as it was all cornered off by police. It only turns out that bloody Obama was there doing some presidential business!! However great it was to say that we had breathed in the same air as the President of the United States, we were miffed that we couldn't go the way we wanted to! Anyway, we got there in the end after one mammouth walk and we saw Greg Proops do some stand up (you know him, from who's line is it anyway and some other comedy panel shows). He was quite amusing and we met a great couple who had an aligator farm!! They had 10,000 aligators in their farm and I just couldn't resist taking a picture of the aligator foot that he uses as a mobile phone holder!! Cool huh!?!? Anywho, after that, we gained entry to the Playboy Club which had all the bunnies as blackjack dealers. We then were allowed up to the Moon club which was at the very top of the Palms hotel. It had the most incredible views as you can see and we danced the night away! It was an open roofed club too which took us a couple of hours to realise! There were lots of rude pics in the ladies toilets (I've posted one above so I'm sorry if it offends some of you but there was a worse one I took of a naked woman on the toilet door! She was beautiful but not quite blog-appropriate!). When we got back to Circus Circus where we were staying, we met some lads from Manchester and one was wearing a rather fetching hat as you can see. And yes, Paige did end up wearing it after a frozen margharita!!