Nothing to write home about…

I am guessing this will be my last travel blog - from this trip!

We just arrived on South Beach, Miami, yesterday and by now I am kind of in shock. It’s Sunday and “hubby2b” is in our hotel room watching the F1 race from Germany. I took the opportunity to go to the beach for a while. Have a wander (and wonder!) along Ocean Dr and watch the freak show… Cause it is a freak show, no doubt!

What strikes me is how often you meet Americans that seem so prude and often horrified by how “lose” and frivolous us Europeans are. How we sunbathe top less (or at least some of us used to – in the 80’s!).

Den svenska synden...

How Arne Mattsson created “the Swedish sin” (which Ingmar Bergman is most oftenly accused of) when he let Ulla Jacobsson ”show titt” in his movie, One Summer of Happiness (Swedish: Hon dansade en sommar) from 1951. And eventually Old Milwaukee Beer created “the Swedish Bikini Team” with their world famous commercial.

And some things are true, aren’t they? We do have sex before marrieage here in Europe. At least most of us have. And you know what? I think most people in the States do to but they don’t tell! We do dress sexier and we are not as strict or prude when it comes to skirt lengths etc. even in more formal settings. But after being to Miami and seeing the way people dress and behave here: Man! We are little saints over there!

I mean, I am walking down the street in broad day light, in the middle of the afternoon, and I see more skin than I’d expect to see in any night club in any European city… I am embarrassed and I am definitely not a prude. I do however think that there’s a time and a place for everything and sitting at a table in a restaurant (even if it’s open air) wearing nothing but a bikini…. Well, that’s just bad taste!

Bad taste...?

And people here seem not to realise that some things are less flattering if you’re 100+ kgs. I know that i shouldn’t be saying that because it is important that larger people are comfortable with their bodies and all that but come on… The size of some people here is grotesque! Even with clothes on! I am not going to get started on American food habits again but there is something wrong with serving 20 Oz (567 gr) steaks , don’t you agree? It used to be called gluttony but let’s put the seven sins aside and just focus on the fact that most people aren’t (or shouldn’t at least be) able to eat that much, why most of it gets thrown away anyway. How sickening is that when thousands starve to death every day? I am not playing miss-goody-two-shoes here but most of the time we (me + h2b) order a starter each or we share an entré and very often we can barely finish the food. OK, neither of us is a very big eater but still… But that was a side tack I have covered too many times already! Sorry about that! Anyway, just wanted to let ya’ll know that Miami is nothing much to write home about. At least not if your a 30-something who’s not keen on dancing half naked on a bar top at noon.

And besides that, people are incredibly rude here and still expect huge tips but seem not to see the correlation between service level and tip size… We had a waiter checking the size of the tip and telling us “yeah, that’s ok” before he turned to walk away. Needless to say, we started laughing out loud at this which made him very offended… It also seems that you are in the wrong, for only speaking English (!) and not Spanish so unless you want people to walk all over you – bring a Spanish lingo book. The valet service dude at the hotel was one of the rudest people I’ve ever met and when he pissed us off for the second time in two days, I lost it and told him that. Loud and clear! Which made his boss come running with the excuse that “he only speaks Spanish”. Something I found hilarious, as we were a) in an international hotel in America and b) he obviously knew enough English to manage to be really rude and offensive to us…

So, we’re not coming back here any time soon, that’s for sure! ;)