Miami - 10 Lessons Learnt

1. Don't try to be funny. Especially my kind of dry, sarcastic funny. It does NOT work.
2. Don't speak in exactly your English accent. Though it is the epitome of enunciation no-one will understand you. Adopt a slight twang and all of a sudden you will be clear as a bell.
3. Don't stand too near to trees, bushes, or any nature. There are hardly any flying insects, but there are ants everywhere - and they love my ankles.
4. Don't buy water on the beach from a hotel outlet: it will cost you $10 (a fiver or so!). The upside is they fill a plastic bag with ice and place the bottle of water in that. What a waste of natural resources. See point 7.
5. Don't cycle on the left, it's just plain dangerous
6. Don't even attempt to call people Sir or Ma'am. Not only do you sound ridiculous but it will make you laugh out loud. Which then greatly upsets the person you're talking to. They totally don't get why that's funny.
7. Don't judge a place by home standards. Yes you can't recycle*. Yes the cars are bigger than my flat*. Yes the food is awful - burgers, pizzas, hot-dogs. But culture is out there somewhere, just not as we know it.
8. If travelling alone get spray-on suntan lotion for your back. If you don't you will get streaks of sun-burn where you couldn't quite reach.
9. Don't worry about what anyone else thinks of you. Let them worry about themselves: their hair; their cars; their shoes; their tans; their muscles. You just hang with the Latino dudes and enjoy life chica.
10. Read the Time Out gospel at all times. Just when you were feeling a bit homesick and some Dutch people gave you negative vibes TO comes to the rescue with 57 varieties of things to do. Thank you TO!

* In reality you can totally judge this country on lack of recycling, overuse of natural resources and a total lack of care about 'the rest of the planet'. But as I'm on holiday I will moan about it to all of you when I get back. 'Puta'!