Lauren amd Bjorn lost in Miami.

Today I woke up late after getting to bed at past 2am and getting woken up by screaming roommates at 4:30am. I had to dash down to get breakfast, making it in the nick of time as they were starting to clear it away! I went down to the pool after to decide what to do today and decided to go to the Holocaust memorial and the south-est part of the island and Bjorn decided to come along too.

We walked to the Holocaust memorial which isn't that far but in the boiling Sun it feels much longer. The memorial was hauntingly beautiful and I can't think of any other way to describe it. It was a sculpture of a hand in the middle of a fountain and the hand had people going into it. We walked around the sculpture and saw the long long list of names that were only some of the concentration camps victims. We then went down this walkway which took you into the muddle of the fountain to the base of the sculpture where there were more sculptures of people clearly in pain. It was very symbolic and there was music playing which, like I said, made it beautiful but very chilling. There was more names there too and when we left we saw some photos and captions about what happened during that awful time.

We then got in a bus to get to the bottom of the island and this is where our problems began. We didn't quite know where to get off and accidentally missed our stop and the bus started to go over the long bridge to mainland Miami! We got off at the first stop but realised we didn't know what to do next as we couldn't walk back because it was a very long way, it was very hot and besides there were no sidewalks!! We couldn't get a bus as we didn't have anymore change and we had no way of crossing the 6 or so lanes of traffic to the other side!so to make matters worse I had no water left. Luckily we both had sunscreen with us so layered that on in preparation for our stranded and vulnerable state in the sun. We wondered around a bit trying to figure our what to do when suddenly we were saved!! A woman told us we could follow a road around and under the busy road to the Children's museum where we could get money, call a cab if we wanted and all that.

Stranded between islands on a bridge...

We got to the Children's museum and they were so helpful, we decided we'd get the bus back as there was a stop right outside but first we got lunch and a drink from the subway next door. (Oh and by the way the Children's museum looks awesome I want to be a child again so it is socially acceptable for me to go). We had to wait a while for the bus but eventually got on and got back where we should have git off the bus and after quite a walk we eventually we made it to the tip of the island. It was really nice and we sat there fir a short bit then walked around, saw the view of all the beaches going along the side of the island then looped around to catch the bus back to the hostel.

It took a while but we got there in the end and it was beautiful!

We eventually got back about 4pm (despite having lost hope long ago we would ever get back alive). We had been out for only about 4hours but it felt like way longer. I chilled by the pool a bit and skyped my mum then sorted out accommodation for my last night in the states which, because it's at the airport, is so much more expensive then every other hotel! Me, Laura, Helen and Lisa went out for dinner to an Italian place for a nice goodbye meal and got Fro-Yo on the way back (yay!).