When one is on the go from early morning to late night, one needs coffee, and none is stronger than Cuban coffee, which is sold in small cups to make sure you don't drink so much that your heart explodes.
Cuban Coffee
We met our couchsurfing host, Meagan. My mom was opposed to me doing couchsurfing (out to protect me from people who would slit my throat in my sleep), but after meeting Meagan and realizing it would be not only Meagan, but her sister and her friend staying the night with her as well, I realized that A)I was about to spend Friday night hanging out with four cool girls or B)I would have my throat slit in my sleep by a cult of cool girls. Neither seemed like a particularly poor option.
A horrible picture of Sarah, Megan's friend, Megan's sister and Megan (didn't get permission from the other two to use names)
I was hyped to go salsa dancing, and we went straight to my favorite salsa club in South Beach, Mangos, but all we got to see of it was the front door:
This was because yours truly left his passport in Orlando, forgetting that in America they ID at the door. I felt slightly better that Megan had lost her driver's licence and they wouldn't let her in either.
So we spent the rest of the evening walking around South Beach. The picture of the four girls was taken in Tantra, a restaurant billed as "the best place to see celebrities". Only celebreties could afford it. A steak and lobster tail dinner was $95. An ounce of Russian caviar was $250. Designed, according to the front of the menu, to "enhance the senses", it had grass (as in actual sod) on the floor, incence burning in the air, new wave music on the speakers and various soft-porn movies on flat screen televisions. My senses were enhanced enough by the bartender, whose chest had also been enhanced. Drop-dead-supermodel-gorgeous and she was working as a bartender. That's Miami for you. At the bar, the girls each had $15 martinis before we headed back out into the night.
Meagan stopped us in front of another restaurant and said: "that place has the coolest bathrooms ever." I went to check it out. Maybe she didn't mean coolest literally, but the urinals in the men's bathroom were full of ice:
Now, I used the one on the left, and confirmed the suspicion that urine rapidly melts ice. This means it is, in fact, someone's job to continually refill these urinals all night. That is also Miami for you.
We tried, unsuccesfully, to get into a few other clubs before we went to a party at the University of Miami that Meagan knew about. It was pretty low-key, but I did get to learn about beer pong. This is a picture of beer pong:
Cups full of beer are placed on either side of the table. If you get a ping-pong ball into one of the opposing team's cups, they have to drink the cup. Much inebrity ensues.
We crashed after the party, but did get up early the next morning to take a walk on the beach and getting into the car to drive back to Orlando. After all, it was Saturday, and I had promised to take Sarah to some Orlando clubs.
South Beach