The following takes place between 06:01AM 07/05/11 and 11:00AM 13/05/11:

Day 6:

My earlier conclusion had been right, it was indeed the feathered cushions that had caused my near death experience due to not being able to breath.  As we all know breathing is fairly important.  Once the feathered cushions had been moved into a seperate room the problem subsided.  So we can definitely add feathers to my list of allegies.  If any women out there want to cook me dinner sometime, please remember no eggs, no milk (although we may be able to come to some sort of compromise with this) and definitely no feathers (in the meal or in your upholstery/soft furnishings).

Today E and G drove us around the whole of New Orleans showing many areas which had been worst hit during Hurricane Katrina.  It was particularly sad to see the remains of homes and houses that still have military paint daubed on the outside to symbolise whether people were alive or dead in the houses back when the Hurricane hit.  It appears work has started on restoring these areas six years on, including some Brad Pitt designed Eco homes being built.

I also noticed apart from all the drive thru fast food burger outlets they have there, they also have drive thru Daiquiri outlets.  Surely this is a little strange?  A place you can drive thru and pick up very alcoholic drinks?  Hmmm.

We did have a few Daiquiris that night, although obviously we were not driving at the time.

Day 7:

Sadly today was our last day in New Orleans as we were due to fly back to Miami in the afternoon.  We got up early today as we wanted to see the Man U- Chelsea game in a bar, it was a 10am kick off and I at least was desperate for Chelsea to win.  It takes a lot for me to sit and cheer on Chelsea but my hatred for Man U out weighs my hatred for Chelsea, sadly Man U won 2-1.  Gutted.  The game wasn’t helped by the fact the very loud American Chelsea fan opposite kept yelling out “C’mon! What you’ll say blues!” and “C’mon! What you’ll say boys!”, every few minutes.  Most irritating.

It was time for us to leave, so we headed back to the house to pack our bags and R could say an emotional goodbye to Otto the dog, they had formed quite a bond.  It seemed to me that R and Otto were clearly brothers from a different mother.  Both like to sleep as much as possible and both like to go for a wee in the garden first thing in the morning.  We said our goodbyes and caught the 5:25pm flight back, it was a good flight and we were back in Miami by 8:50pm.

Sadly we couldn’t get a room at out favourite the Essex House Hotel so we had to make do with the San Juan Hotel.  It was clearly not on the same level as the Essex or indeed any of the other hotels on it’s street.  From the outside it looked ratty, the blue porch roof was falling down, it was in need of a spruce up.  Inside it was basic, basic was ok, but we really thought we had moved up in the world.  Why settle for basic when we could have ‘mediocre’ or even ‘above satisfactory’.

We had dinner out (not a candlelit affair like most of the other punters) then had a couple of beers in a bar called ‘Tequila Chicas’.  Now with a name like that you would expect to be served by an awesome looking waitress with lots of other hot waitresses running about in the background and to be fair there were some awesome looking waitresses working there.  Sadly they weren’t serving us, we got served by Jeff.  Great…Nice one Jeff.

We headed back to the hotel because I wanted to check out the view from our window.  We were on the ground floor and the view from our window was of a wall…It was a nice wall though.

“Take a walk on the beach, draw a heart in the sand.   Gimme your hand.  Damn you look sexy.  Let’s go to my yacht in the West Keys, ride my jet skis, loungin in the palm trees”

Day 8:

Today we decided to even up our tans (well, not so much tans rather uneven burns).  We had meticulously planned exactly how we were going to achieve this.  We decided 20 minutes on the back and 20 minutes on the front and with no sun cream whatsoever.  You can call us crazy if you want but it was do or die, we needed to tan up. 

After spending 20 minutes on the back and then 20 minutes on the front I decided to get in the sea to cool down.  At this point I should’ve put some cream on but boys will be boys and all that, so I didn’t bother.  R couldn’t go in the sea because he was wearing the wrong shorts, so he stayed with the bags.  By this time he had realised his error with the aforementioned womens sunglasses so was now spending most of his time squinting and sadly not perving over women on the beach.

Anyway I strolled down to the sea without a care in the world, I may have been super white with red bits but I knew come the morning I would be golden brown or even a rich mahogany colour.  The sea was incredible, crystal clear, warm and refreshing whilst the sand was soft and felt good between my toes.  Upon entering the water a small shoal of fish swam past, I was at one with nature.  The sea was surprisingly calm and there wasn’t even that many people in there either.  The time flew by and whilst I thought I had been in there for maybe 20 minutes, I had actually been there about 45 minutes, all I may add without sun cream.  After my 45 minutes I decided to leave the sea reminiscent of the way Daniel Craig did in James Bond (Casino Royale).  To be honest I think the heart of every woman (and maybe even a few men) skipped a beat as my toned muscular torso rose from the sea.

If you now do a quick calculation you will have noticed I spent 85 minutes (1 hour 25 minutes) without putting sun cream on.  Plus I needed a few minutes to dry, so rounding up that’s 90 minutes in the blazing hot Miami sun without putting cream on…Big mistake.

Proud of our success on the beach we hit Finnegans Way bar for a celebratory pint or two and to hopefully catch the Fulham-Liverpool game on TV.  Obviously you all know Liverpool won 5-2 and it was a cracking game of football.  After watching that I thought Liverpool were going to make a late charge for the Premier League title, but they didn’t.  There was a cute barmaid serving us, which always makes drinking even more enjoyable and the good thing about her was she remebered what drink I wanted even though she had only served us once before a few days earlier.  I could think of only two reasons why she remembered my drink:

A) She’s a great barmaid, and good at her job.

B) She’s in love with me.

After mulling these two scenario’s over in my head I came to the conclusion she was probably a good barmaid.

After this footballing triumph we headed to Lincoln Avenue, all together now!  “We gonna rock down to Lincoln Avenue and then we’ll take it higher”.

Lincoln Avenue is a swish trendy shopping strip with lot’s of fancy restaurants, including Pizza Rustica.  Whilst wandering around I did start to realise that I may have caught the sun earlier.  I wasn’t expecting the colour to come out quite so quickly, after catching a glimpse of my incredibly burnt back and front (not just lobster red, this was seriously red almost luminous red if that’s possible), I decided to go back to the hotel and hide. 

Another night without sleep was on the cards and not just because of Rs snoring.  The burn was hurting a lot and I was in desperate need of some Aftersun (which I didn’t take on holiday as it wouldn’t fit in my bag) and there was also a party kicking off in the room next door.  By the time it got to 3:50AM their party was in full swing, it sounded like 2 guys and 2 girls probably students.  All night all I could hear was “Oooooooo!” “Oh my god!” and “Dude!”.  At one point it sounded like they were all bouncing up and down on their beds like trampolines.  I don’t think I was being naive, it did generally sound like trampoline bouncing rather than bedroom olympics.  R somehow managed to sleep through the party, but I was seriousy pissed off, absolutely livid.  At one point during the night I heard another high pitched “Ooooooooo!”.  I have to say it scared the crap out of me.  It definitely came from our room, it definitely wasn’t me, I would’ve known.  Which meant either:

A) A party reveller next door had got in our room.

B) We had a ghost in our room.

C) R was subconciously being sarcastic in his sleep towards the party revellers next door.

“Ooooooooooooooooooooooo!” There it was, that noise again!  It was bloody well R wasn’t it, either being sarcastic or having a nightmare.

By 5:55AM the party was beginning to die down and by 6:15AM it had finished.  Thank god for that, but it was no use getting any sleep now as the night was over.  I really should’ve made a complaint, but I guess I’m too nice.

Day 9:

I didn’t wake up today as I technically didn’t go to sleep, so as I was already awake I might as well get up.  I was tired as hell but we continued with our plan of attack, today we had decided to visit Downtown Miami.  For all the public transport fans out there we caught the C bus on the corner of 8th Street and Washington.  Obviously we didn’t catch that bus until we had breakfast at the now infamous 11th Street diner.  We hopped off the bus at an area known as Bayside, which was a pleasant touristy area with plenty of shops, restaurants and harbour.  I have never really seen any episodes of Miami Vice but I imagine there would be a good chance that a lot of chase sequences where the criminals were being chased by the cops would be filmed there, followed by the criminal jumping from the harbour into a waiting speed boat and thus the chase continuing on water.  I may be wrong, but it looked about right. 

It was very hot today, I would say it was potentially the hottest day of the holiday so far and because of this we decided to cool down by having a beer in Hooters.  OK, now I know what you’re thinking “James you’re a classy guy, why on earth did you decide to go in Hooters?  Surely not just to ogle the waitresses?”.  Of course nobody pops in Hooters for the ambience or the decor, everybody goes there to drink beer and check out the massive jugs.  So we picked our table and the waitress bounds over to take our order and I have to say I was diappointed.  Every other waitress was good looking apart from our one, don’t get me wrong she was better than Jeff from Tequila Chicas the other night but still not as good as the other girls.  I mean take a look at the blonde girl working at the bar…  Of course I thought about moving tables, but I feel that would have been a little  rude.

After the disappointment of Hooters we took a boat cruise around Miami bay and Star Island, which is an exclusive island with some huge mansions owned by the mega rich and famous.  We saw homes owned by Will Smith, Sylvester Stallone, Rosie O’Donnell (Whoooooo!?), Gloria Estefan (“Doctor Doctor, won’t you please help me?  You gotta help me, you gotta help me.  If you got trouble can’t stop your feet, pay a little visit to Doctor Beat.  Doctor Doctor, won’t you please help me?  You gotta help me, you gotta help me, Doc Doc Doc Doc Doctor Beat”), P Diddy and believe it or not the largest erection we saw on the island was the mansion owned by the inventor of Viagra.

After this nautical nonsense we headed back to South Beach and as our holiday was nearing it’s end, tonight would be a good night to go crazy.  Guess where we started the night?  Bingo! you’ve got it, Finnegans Way…Whilst having a few brewskis in here we watched baseball on TV, it was the Florida Marlins against the Philadelphia Phillies.  I have to say I find baseball to be pretty boring to watch, however a couple of things made it a tad more exciting.  The first thing is that one of the Philadelphia players (I forget his name) plays best when he is ‘In deep’.  I thought baseball was supposed to be a family sport so I was a bit concerned he plays better when he’s up to that sort of thing.  Secondly Philadelphia have a player who is delightfully named Antonio Bastardo.  Ha! Seriously!  Fantastic.  After 4  or 5 pints here we headed to the Good News Bar, Tommy Banana was working as usual and we were a little surprised to pay $20 for 2 pints, but we shouldn’t have been surprised as we’d been in there most nights.  Next up was Duece Bar Club Duece, I wasn’t too keen on this place.  It was pretty busy and once again R decided to try his luck against the locals at Pool, sadly on this rare occasion he lost.  I’m not quite sure what happened, or why his game went wrong.  All I can say is he let me down, he let his country down and most importantly he let himself down.  After this embarrassment we left.

We hot-footed it across the road to a club called Jazid.  It was busy as there was a band playing, I can’t remember their name but musically wise they were quite good, but their singer ‘Fabio’ liked himself a little bit too much.  I can’t actually remember him doing that much singing to be honest.  The reason I know his name was Fabio is because the girl standing next to me kept banging on about how great he was.  I disagreed with her, he wasn’t great he was rubbish, but I decided to be nice nonetheless.  Sadly at this point in the evening everytime we bought a beer we were given a free shot of Tequila.  This was definitely not a good idea, who ever thought that would be a good idea?  I continued to work my magic on the local girl whilst managing to force her small gay male friend to talk to R.  He was most unhappy about this, and I don’t really blame him.  We continued to drink beer and down free Tequila and sadly I found a pair of beer goggles at the bottom of that Tequila bottle.  I even felt sick at one point (which is rare for me when drinking) which I think had more to do with the Tequila rather than the girl I was talking to (although I can’t be sure).  The night was clearly beginning to go a bad way, my usual ultra high standards when it comes to women (Do you live on your own? I hear you ask..of course I do!…) were in serious danger of being blown to smithereens and R was most unhappy about the little gay chap camply shouting in his ear.  Something had to give and it did…R left and went back to the hotel (No, no, no, he went on his own, don’t worry he didn’t leave with his new friend).

So I moved on to Waxy O’Connors again with the girl in tow (I have to admit I have absolutely no idea what her name was).  It was rubbish in there and the girl was hammered, she was an absolute mess.  I decided I would have to try and take her home, but I didn’t know where she lived and I don’t think she did either.  After stopping every few minutes so that she could lie down on the pavement I eventually pretty much carried her home.  I really don’t know how.

Now for the whole evening she hadn’t smoked any cigarettes whilst I had been out, but once she got home she got one secret cigarette out of a secret nondescript box.  I’m not sure what was in that cigarette and I wasn’t sure why it was hidden in the secret box, but whatever it was it must have been quite strong as she passed out.

Marvellous.  I didn’t know where I was or what I was going to do, so I kipped for a couple of hours before waking up to hear her snoring…Are you kidding me!?

Day 10:

I couldn’t handle being in a strange apartment with a strange woman who was snoring, I didn’t know where I was, or who she was, or who I was.  There was no way I wanted to come up with pleasantries at that time of the morning so I decided to quietly leave.

It was 7am, the sun was up and it looked like it was going to be a lovely day.  I stepped out on to the street  and stood for a second to get my bearings, and try to figure out where I was.  Literally as I turned round and began my journey I felt a rather unpleasant tight feeling in my downstairs area, as my testicles were in the vice-like grip of a local prostitute.  Where the hell had she come from!? “Hi! Do you wanna party?” she asked.  “Err, no thanks it’s 7 in the morning” I replied.  “You can **** me for $100” she said. “Ha, no way!” I exclaimed.  She wasn’t all that and a bag of chips, definitely not worth that sort of money.  Why do I always get attacked by either gays or prostitutes?  Everywhere I go, Town, Tesco, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Soho, Brighton…It’s only a matter of time before I get attacked by a gay prostitute, I’m really not looking forward to that moment.  Anyway I politely declined her offer, wriggled my balls out of her grasp, hopped on my beer scooter and left.

I think I was on 2nd or 3rd street and needed to get up to 17th street, so at least 15 blocks to go.  I think I made it 2 blocks before I bumped into the prostitute again, how did she appear in front of me when I was ahead of her?  She was like the character Droopy from the cartoons, always one step ahead…”Hi do you wanna…” before she could finish her sentence “Noooo! No interested” I said.

I accelerated on my beer scooter and managed to get back to the safe confines of our hotel, at just gone 7am, R was asleep.  Thank god he was asleep, at least he’ll never know what happened that night after he left…

I managed to get 5 hrs sleep (that’s 5 hrs sleep in 2 days for all you people who are counting), I got up at Midday and felt as rough as a badgers arse.  After spending days moaning about not getting any sleep for a variety of reasons I now had only myself to blame.  I had stopped myself from getting my much needed beauty sleep.

We headed to Manolo’s restaurant for lunch, I struggled my way through a Chicken baguette, but felt seriously bad.  The Coke refills were a blessing.  As I had a massive hangover and felt insanely dehydrated the best thing I could do was go to the beach and sit in the sun…Made perfect sense.  R was desperate to go in the sea as I had been banging on about how amazing it was last time when he had the wrong shorts on so this time he had the right shorts on and wanted to take a dip.  Whilst he playfully paddled around in the sea, I sat on the beach covered up as I was already burnt and still struggling with my hangover.  Once R returned from the sea (I don’t think he had the same impact on the women and men that I had) we retreated to the hotel as I needed to lie down for a bit.  I needed to compose myself.

Once my hangover had subsided we headed out for dinner to the very nice Van Dyke Cafe on Lincoln Avenue.  The food here was not only plentiful but very nice with it, it may have been a little more expensive than usual, but what the hell it was our last night.  Whilst waiting for my food to arrive I couldn’t help but notice the strange set up on the table next to us.  With a combination of subtle hand gestures, and exaggerated eye movements I managed to get R to notice there was a stunningly beautiful blonde girl of about 20 years old sitting with a fat old guy in his, I guess mid 50’s.  This kind of thing really winds me up, and I always need to know what the hell is going on.  Obviously I couldn’t ask so I came up with 3 possible scenarios in my head:

A) He’s her dad.  This didn’t seem too likely as dads don’t generally get that touchy feely with their daughters…

B) She’s an escort girl/Prostitute.  Although maybe we can rule this out as another 3 men turned up and they all seemed to know her…Although maybe that isn’t a good reason to rule it out…If she was a prostitute I wouldn’t have minded her squeezing my balls the night before…instead of that other one.

C) He’s loaded and she’s just with him for the money.  Although this sounds cynical it’s also the most likely reason.

We left in disgust and headed to the Drexel Irish pub to catch the end of the basketball, Miami beat Boston 4-1.  Then on a rather quiet note we made our way back to the hotel, but not before popping in the Liquor Lounge for 1 last beer.

Day 11:

Up at 9:30am today as this was the last day, we were going home.  We checked out of the San Juan hotel and had breakfast at Jerrys Diner which wasn’t great actually.  I ordered the Roast beef sandwich, alas they were out of Roast beef so I settled for the Salami sandwich.  Surprisingly the Salami sandwich was just a Salami sandwich, literally Salami in bread.  Oh and a massive pickle on the side of the plate, which I don’t like anyway.  You can never get away from the pickle.

After this rather disappointing breakfast we caught the bus to the airport.  The bus cost $2.35 which was an  absolute bargain when you compare it to a taxi which cost $32.  Bargain!

We spent the next 4.5hrs hanging around the airport generally looking cool.  We had a couple of pints at the bar, a turkey sandwich and a packet of Miss Vickies salt n vinegar crisps.  We made the obligatory trip to Duty Free as R wanted to stock up on fags.  The sales assistant popped over to ask “Do you need any help?”.  Quick as a flash I replied “He certainly does need help”.  Ahh how we laughed.  A classic joke, executed to perfection.

The 8.5hr flight back was fairly quick although it was very cramped and my back and legs were aching quite considerably.  I watched  the film ‘The Dilemna’, and this didn’t really help matters, it wasn’t particularly funny and wasn’t particularly good, in fact nothing really happened. The only dilemna I could see was whether I was going to be able to finish watching the film or not.  They were also showing another film about a plane that flies from Miami to London, I guess this was the sequel to the original film that I saw on the way out.  Personally I thought the original was better, as is generally the case, not always, but generally.

We touched down in good ol’ Blighty at 8:40am, and after having no gay comments from passport control we touched down in good ol’ Basingstoke at 11:00am.

That’s it!  The holiday was over!  I had a fantastic time, it was an epic holiday, one of the best for a long time, but sadly nothing lasts forever.  What have  I learnt?  I hear you ask.  I have learnt the following:

Never drink Tequila, always use sun cream, never sit on feathered cushions, always use Mosquito spray and most important of all…always wear industrial ear defenders when trying to sleep…

The End.

The following takes place between 05:30hrs 2/5/11 and 06:00hrs 07/5/11:

Day 1:

Awoke at 05:30AM, but it didn’t matter as today we were going to Miami (we being me and my trusty sidekick R).  We jumped in L’s A-Team van at approximately 6:30AM and headed to Heathrow.  Nothing of any note happened at the airport, but my mild concern at potentially spending 10hrs on a plane was replaced by the excitement of 10 days in Miami and New Orleans.  Excitement was in the air.

We took off!  Within 5 mins of take off I had the woman in fronts chair in my face, this was most unwanted.  9hrs and 55 mins of the woman in fronts chair in my face wasn’t good, plus there was minimal leg room.  I don’t know why it is but I can never bring myself to lower my chair back on a plane.  I feel like I’d be invading the person behinds personal space, I don’t like it when it happens to me, so I never do it to anyone else, thus I spend all my flights sitting bolt upright.

I put the TV on.  There was a film just starting, it was a film about a plane that took off in London and had to make it’s way to Miami.  It was a fascinating film although to be honest it was a little slow in places.  I watched it for a couple of hours but began to get a little bored, so decided to see what else was on.  I decided to watch the film ‘The Green Hornet’.  This was not a great film, mediocre at best, the best thing about it was Cameron Diaz and she was crimally underused.  I would suggest if you haven’t seen it then don’t bother.

I decided to flick back and see how the plane was doing in the other film, it was doing well and I couldn’t help but feel a strange parallel between the film and my journey, especially as our plane and the plane in the film landed at the same time.  Strange.  Still I love a happy ending.

We landed at 2:15pm US time (7:15pm British time), and believe it or not we were 1 hour early.  Nice one Biggles.   Here we were…Miami baby!  Now all we had to do next was negociate passport control…It actually took longer to get through Passport control than it did to fly there.  I think it’s fair to say US passport officers are some of the scariest people you could ever meet.  Even though I have done nothing wrong ever they still have the ability to make you think you’ve done something wrong.  They put doubt in your mind and make you think that you’re up to no good.  Anyway the English guy at the front of the queue was getting asked all sorts of questions getting all sorts of paperwork out of his bag, it was like he was being questioned by Columbo or the Spanish Inquisition.  R and I began to panic, “What if we are bad people, and we just don’t know it?”.  I had all the documentation for the hotels in my bag, but R didn’t have any paperwork.  What if I get let in the country and he doesn’t?  We decided to approach the officer together, big mistake…”What is your relationship to each other?” He asked me.  “Err just friends, travelling together” I replied.  “Aah, are you friends?  Or are you friends…?” he asked with a funny look in his eye.  As he said this he interlocked his fingers and clenched his hands together.  Ahh bloody hell! 1o hours into our holiday and we had the first gay comment, bloody marvellous (not that there’s anything wrong with that, whatever floats your boat).  Well we tried to laugh it off.  “Just friends” I replied in a very masculine heterosexual voice.  R was told to take his pink suitcase and diamond encrusted Louis Vuitton handbag and get back in the queue. 

Taxi to Miami South Beath please and step on it!  We arrived at our hotel, the wonderful Essex House Hotel (obviously I tried taking photo’s of the sign and covering up the first two letters, hehe!  I managed to get a lampost to cover the first ‘s’ but that just made it the E sex House Hotel which doesn’t quite work.  Oh well, small minds and all that…).  The only way was indeed Essex with this hotel, usually a place this nice would be out of our league, but I guess we bought it in a sale.  Very nice.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Miami uh uh, Southbeach, bringin’ the heat, uh.  Haha! Can y’all feel that?  Can y’all feel that?  Jig it out, uh”.

It had been a long day and we needed a beer, we hit possibly our soon to be most visited bar of the holiday ‘Finnegans Way’.  We had beers and I had a pork sandwich (no gay connotations with that).

Within hours of being there I had been bitten to death by Mosquitos.  I had underestimated the mosquitos.

Day 2:

I got up at 9:30am, the beds here are very comfortable.

We took one of our long aimless walks before breakfast.  The problem is we cannot make a decision on where to eat so walk for miles in the boiling sun, hungry and thirsty just because we can’t make a decision.  No matter where we are in the world we walk aimlessly in search of food.  I had a Chicken burger and Chips for breakfast, when in Rome etc…It was nearly brunch by then.

Today was all about the beach, we needed a bit of beach action.  I needed to turn my superfit white body into a superfit adonis like tanned body.  We needed a plan, we couldn’t just go out there half-cocked so to speak otherwise we’d burn to a crisp.  We decided upon a 1 hr tanning session, 30 mins on the front, 30 mins on the back.  We needed to take it easy.  Of course I applied sun cream, but I’ll admit I’m crap at it.  I miss areas and never get it all on my back, hence after 1 hr, half my back was red, whilst the other half was white.  I looked like an idiot, a tanning disaster.

Anyway whilst lying there on the beach, I remembered a quote from R the night before.  His quote was “I’m not a pervert”.  What made me remember this was that a not unattractive woman had decided to lie on the beach not far from us.  I’d clocked this woman as soon as she got there, but obviously I only glanced at her in short sharp bursts, though as not to raise suspicion.  R however was wearing a new pair of sunglasses that he’d just bought, he was very proud of them.  He bought them in the shop earlier, when asked if they suited him I replied “Yeah, they look good”.  He was after a pair of Aviator shades like Tom Cruise in Top Gun.  There was something wrong with the shades but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, so I let him buy them.  Sadly he looked more Penelope Cruz than Tom Cruise and more Top Shop than Top Gun.  They were womens sunglasses!  Ha!

Nevertheless he wore his womens shades to good effect whilst definitely not ‘perving’ over the woman who was applying sun cream to her norks.  Topless.  I was half expecting him to go over and tell her she had missed a bit and offer to rub the cream in for her.  Fair play to him, she never noticed.  Or maybe she did, maybe she saw the female sunglasses and thought “well that can’t be a milky white British guy perving over me as she’s wearing womens sunglasses, it’s obviously just another woman who appreciates my body, just one woman complementing another woman in a strictly non sexual way with only just a hint of Lesbianism”.  I think I’ve thought about this way too much…

Drinks consumed during the afternoon included Coors, Heineken and an insanely strong Long Island Ice T.

“Bouncin in the club where the heat is on.  All night, on the beach until the break of dawn.  I’m goin to Miami, welcome to Miami”.

The evening consisted of some strong rum based cocktails in the hotel bar, before hitting the ‘Good news Cafe’.  Where the barman Tommy Banana, sorry misread his t-shirt..Tommy Bahama told us “Pimms tastes like Ass”.  I’m not really sure why he told us that as we weren’t drinking Pimms, and if he was trying to sell us some then he really needs to work on his sales pitch.  After this we headed back to our most visited bar ‘Finnegans Way’ for some Pool action.  If there’s one thing me and R are good at on holiday it’s beating foreigners at Pool, admittedly R is the better player.  Mainly because since he was old enough to hold a pool cue he has been playing Pool, even as a small child before he was tall enough to see over a Pool table he could play.  He would sit in his pram and use a complex system of mirrors attached to his cue to be able to see every ball on the table.  Anyway did I ever tell you about the time we took on the entire nation of Australia at pool and won?…That story is for another day.

So, we set up camp on the Pool table, when this time a gang of Cubans decided to try there luck against the Welsh Wizard.  Obviously R didn’t lose a game and the Cubans were defeated.  We were introduced to DonGato of DonGato Productions.  A shifty looking character who got his nickname because the pupils of his eyes were not circular but instead they were rugby ball shaped.  To be honest I’d had a few drinks and I had a hard time understanding what he was banging on about, I got it in the end.  To be honest the Cubans were a nice bunch of people, DonGato even thought R and I were 23 years old!  Sadly R told them the truth “We’re actually 27” he said.  DonGato couldn’t believe it.  Whilst the little Cuban guy and his Argentinian wife invited us to their family party which are legendary apparently.  Sadly we couldn’t make it although I doubt they would’ve remembered who the hell we were if we turned up on their doorstep “Hola! We’re here for the party…You don’t remember us?  Oh dear…Adios!” 

One last pint in Waxy O’connors Irish bar before heading home, I was a little drunk by now but two things were bothering me.

A)  I saw a man wearing shorts that were incredibly long, but should they really be called shorts?  At what point do shorts become longs?

B) Why was I attracting the attentions of not only Mosquitos but now cats?  I guess even they find me irresistable…

Day 3:

Breakfast at the 11th St Diner, Chicken sandwich.  This place was soon to become our favourite eating venue.  The diner is actually a silver railroad car which began life in Pennsyvania but now sits on the corner of 11th St and Washington.

After this we once again aimlessly wandered about but it was too hot, so we headed to the hotel pool to come up with some sort of plan.  Though the pool was small it was very nice and certainly did the job.  Not much else happened today, except watching some football before the evening set in.  We headed to the Good News Cafe, though Tommy Banana wasn’t working, then we stumbled across the Mayame Hotel bar.  It looked cool and sophisticated, right up our alley.  It was me and R all over, this is where we belonged.  It had a tropical beach hut bar in the middle of the hotel garden and there were a few cool looking people sitting at the bar.  “2 for 1 on cocktails ” the bouncer said.  So we were in, we couldn’t turn down the chance to look cool whilst drinking half price cocktails.  We had 3 cocktails each (My cocktail of choice for the evening was Caipirinhas), baring in mind it was 2 for 1 this was going to be cheap…errr not so.  Our bill came to $92 (£60)…Ouch.  It was at this point I rather coincidentally realised I had no money on me.  This forced R to pay on his credit card.  Who knows what happened to the half price cocktails, maybe they were half price and really they are double $92.  We both learnt from this experience, I learnt that it’s alway good to have R and his credit card around and he learnt to check I have money on me.

Day 4:

Today we were moving on to New Orleans for a few days, we bid a fond farewell to the Essex House Hotel and jumped on a flight to NOLA.  We arrived at 11:50am and we were picked up by E and his girlfriend G.  G is a born and bred New orleans resident while E is a Bostonian but spends a lot of time there.

We dropped our stuff off at there house and met there dog Otto.  I must admit he was a cool boxer dog, I’m  not sure how happy he was at the thought of spending the next 3 nights sharing his room with us. 

We took the streetcar (tram) into the downtown area for a good look around the city.  Our first stop for food in the city was a daunting experience as New Orleans is well known for having a big seafood scene, in fact I’ve never seen such a diverse selection of foods in restaurants, all kinds of bizaare meats and seafood.  Anyway Oysters are a speciality and we were forced to eat them.  Anyone who knows me, knows I’m always up for trying new foods.  I’m not the type of person who eats the same things everyday, you’ll always find me in the kitchen at home whipping up a culinary storm.  I’m not the type of person who eats Pizzas and burgers all the time.  Anyway I must admit I have never eaten oysters before and I was a little scared and apprehensive.  They looked horrible.  We were given crackers to eat with the oysters just in case.  Most hardcore people eat them on there own, but if you want to wimp out a bit you can put it on a cracker.  There wasn’t enough crackers in that restaurant to make me enjoy this but I had to do it…I put it in my mouth, bit down on it and it exploded in my mouth, it was slimey and smooth.  I swallowed it and just concentrated on the cracker…For a minute I thought I was going to bring it back up…I didn’t.  I wouldn’t be doing that again.  After I’d eaten it I found out that they are alive when you eat them!  Noooo!  There is no way Oysters and Crackers will replace my classic Saturday night snack of Cheese and Crackers.  Give me cheese please anyday.

I’m glad to say after this we got some proper food ie meat that is already dead.  Apologies to all the vegetarians out there, but you know I like meat (no gay connotations to that comment either).  We had dinner at the World War 2 museum, which consisted of pork sliders (mini baps with pork in them) and some sort of beef pie things (can’t remember the name).  After eating this feast I was surprised to see the manager come over and ask if the meal was ok.  E told her it was ok, but the chips were too salty and over spiced, so we got them free and I imagine the chef was made redundant.

Next we checked out the famous Bourbon Street, which is the home of Jazz.  The most famous name in Jazz.  I must admit even though it was the daytime and jazz is more of a night time activity I couldn’t see too much jazz going on.  We did see Preservation Hall which is possibly the most famous jazz club in the area, but what I did see was a sea of ‘jazz’ clubs of a different kind.  That’s right, strip clubs everywhere!  I don’t think I have ever seen so many strip clubs condensed into an area like that before.  Even during the daytime, there were strippers hanging out of the bars trying to drum up a bit of business.  A few years ago I would’ve been over the moon at finding this sort of place but I felt strangely nonchalant about the whole thing.  I imagine this is the type of place Americans go for stag doos or Vegas.

We walked a fair few miles today, all over the city.  In particular we made a beeline to a bar called Le Bon Temp Roule.  The rock/metal legend that is Pepper Keenan owns the bar and we wanted to meet him.  Apparently he can always be found in his bar, alas the one time I turn up he isn’t in.  It was a bit of a dive bar, but I liked it.  Quite a few beers on tap at the bar.  I didn’t really want the European beers that I drink all the time, I wanted something a bit more off the beaten track, something a bit more dirty.  There was a beer tap with a yellow rubber dog on top of it, I asked the barman what it was like.  I can’t remember what it was called, something like Surfin’ dog, or Dirty dog or Crazy surfin’ dog.  I don’t know.  Anyway the barman told me it “Isn’t a great beer, not very nice, you probably won’t like it”.  Well after selling it like that I was sold.  The barman was a born salesmen.  “2 pints of Crazy dirty surfin’ dog please!”.  I took a sip, it was digusting.  Needless to say it took a while to finish those beers.  The barman must have been pleased though, his cunning reverse psycology had sold probably the only 2 pints of that stuff ever.

Whilst walking back to the house we came across Magazine Street which has a few fancy shops and a few cool shops along it.  The shops were taking part in Shopfest, which effectively means all the shops stay open late and strangely to entice potential customers into their shops they give you free beer and nibbles.  This felt wierd, going into shops with no intention of buying anything, just going in to get free beer.  Of course we drunk as much as we could, we weren’t going to turn it down, but it did seem strange.  We went in one shop that specialised in feng shui-ing peoples home.  Basically they go in and remove anything that they believe is cluttering up somebody’s house, then sell it in their shop.  So they get paid to remove goods from a house then they make money selling the objects…What a great idea.  So we went in the shop which was being supervised by children, children hiding everywhere, operating the tills, giving out beer or Sangria if you  want it.  Needless to say we went in drank the beer, used the toilet, didn’t buy anything then left.

The evening was drawing to a close so we headed back to G’s house.  Otto was there awaiting our arrival.  At this point I knew something in the house was bothering me.  I didn’t know what.  My eyes were itching and more worryingly I was having problems breathing and my chest was very tight.  I could think of 3 possible reasons for this:

1) Otto the dog

2) Feathered cushions

3) Egg filled cookies

I unfairly thought that Otto the dog was to blame, I think I jumped at that conclusion too quickly.

I got no sleep at all that night due to 3 reasons:

1) R’s snoring was intolerable.  So loud.  It was like being in a room with a jumbo jet taking off whilst Maria Sharapova plays a 3 set tennis match against Victoria Azarenka, whilst a  Formula one car drives up and down the street outside at full speed.

2) I couldn’t breathe properly.

3) Worried Otto the dog would attack me because I suspected him of causing my allergic reaction.

Day 5:

I didn’t get any sleep at all, I was very tired.  I was half expecting to get up and see Otto the dog holding a pillow over his ears with his paws, I’m not sure how much sleep he got last night.

Today was all about going to the Jazzfest, this was one of the main reasons we were here.  It is a very popular festival, even though it is called Jazzfest it actually hosts all kinds of acts, Jazz,blues, gospel, rock, pop, etc.  It was an extremely hot day and being out in the sun all day with no real shade was difficult, any chance we had to walk through a tent we took it.  To cope with the heat we bought 2 large strawberry lemonades each then filled then when no one was looking with half a bottle of Vodka each…That should take the edge off…  Acts we watched today included Guitar Slim (Blues guitarist, too clean for me, need my blues to be a bit more dirty and unhappy), some Gospel (Praise the lord!), some Folk, The Soul Rebels Brass Band (very cool, synchronised dancing, excellent part band), Bonerama (white brass band, nice cover of Black Sabbaths War Pigs), Better than Ezra (Inoffensive tedious middle of the road crap).  Then onto the Headliners, Arcade Fire.  They were excellent, best band of the day for me.  They played all the hits off ‘Funeral’ except ‘Crown of Love’, but they never seem to play that…

“If you still want me, please forgive me, the crown of love has fallen from me.  If you still want me, please forgive me, because the spark is not within me”.

They played a great show, lots of energy and I was amazed by how they are all multi instrumentallists, continually swapping.  I get annoyed because I can’t play one instrument, yet these people can play four or five each.  They also have two good looking female violinists which made it even more enjoyable.

After 9 hrs in the sun it was time to leave, not before having a few beers at some post festival street parties.  We headed back downtown to the incredibly busy Bourbon Street area.  It was bedlam here now, crazy busy and strip clubtastic, I have to say it was too busy for me.  Drunk people falling out of allsorts of bars and the ‘clubs’ were in full swing.  We did maybe 3 more hrs of walking and drinking before settling in a bar with a pool table.  R was challenged to a game of doubles by a way too confident American guy and his mildly irritating girlfriend.  They tried every trick in the book to put us off, mainly the girl jiggling her boobs in front of the pockets etc.  It didn’t put us off, we crushed them.   After our victory we got a taxi home.

After complaining about R’s snoring the night before (I think Otto would complain if he could talk), I was hoping for a better nights sleep.  The snoring was more erratic, maybe 50-70% of the night was Snorefest but sadly for me R left his phone on all night and received some sort of text message in the middle of the night.  Which meant every 20 minutes or so a large “beep” would emanate from the phone, and it would do this until the message was read.  I couldn’t figure out what the noise was or where it was coming from.  I had a look around in the dark but couldn’t see anything.  I didn’t want to turn the light on in case it woke Otto up and he ate me.  So once again I got very little sleep, so even when R wasn’t snoring too much he still finds ingenious ways of keeping everyone else awake.

End of Part 1.