Jubilee and Public Viewing

Close to my home is a beautiful park, called "Gardens of the World." It used to be just a nice park, but then, I think 10 years ago, they've started building international inspired gardens with help from the certain nations. Currently they have Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Balinese, Oriental, Renaissance and Christian gardens and a maze. Sounds beautiful, right? Well it is!

Yesterday those park celebrated its 25th birthday with lots of show elements and public soccer viewing and I've went with a friend to watch it.

My outfit. This picture is kinda weird ... I like the pose, because it makes me look skinnier, but my facial expression could be much better. The shirt is really cute though! It has a bow over the heart and knots at the back. It's from mexx.

They had lots of delicious food and I've tried a lot. I was happy about his one: Ichigo Daifuku! Never had them before.

Performers.

This one's cool! The park is planning a new garden, called "Zauberwald" or "Enchanted Forest". This is the first figurine.
And then:

My first public viewing! Germany vs. Portugal and Germany won!
Public Viewing is quite a new phenomenon in Germany. In 2006 we've hosted the World Cup here and that was the beginning of masses gathering to watch the games together. Only for big events like the World Cup or the European Championship though ... and only soccer. Kinda weird actually...
But it was my first time and I LOVED IT! I'm not a big sports fan, but the masses around you just pull you with them. It's awesome. Although it was reeeeeally cold! >_<

I Love Key West Part 2

I wasn't going to let so much time pass during the entries, but hey. It happens, right?

So my second day in Key West was really great.

First, we drove to the town (of course) and walked down to the southernmost point of the US. I have to say, this place is really nice!
Trees, houses, everything is just beautiful. I'd love to live in a place like this, but sadly I'm living in a not so pretty part of Berlin.

So here's me 90 miles away from Cuba. This spot is closer to Cuba than it is to Miami! Underneath the berries is my mum.

We also found this cute thing nearby. I've always just seen them on TV and I never thought thing like this actually existed nowadays. My mum forgot to hide her arm though...

After this we went home to have "lunch." You know, the Keys are very famous for their Lime Cake. And although it sounds disgusting, we had to buy some. Of course!

So we headed to the hotel to eat some cake ... an because I know myself (I don't like most cakes ... I'm the fried food type) I got myself some sushi from the supermarket. Well it sure was good ... but I didn't check the label and ended with spicy sushi. WHO ON EARTH PUTS CHILI SAUCE IN SUSHI?!?! IT'S NOT DELICOUS! SPICY TUNA MAKI ARE MADE A DIFFERENT WAY!

Eh ... well ... it was quite alright.

The cake was not. I can't even describe it ... I ate a small piece and that was it. Just not my taste.

Afterwards we decided to go for Hemingway's house. I have to say ... that guy knew how to live.

We wanted to see his favourite bar, too (good stories), but it was crowded!

So we went here for dinner:

Which was a great decision!! Probably the best food during our whole trip. We just went there, because we had coupons for drinks from our hotel but it was great!

Very big cocktails - the only ones during this two weeks (talking 'bout expensive...)

Ribs for my dad:

I don't know what they did with the fries, but they were so delicious, I could have eaten two servings of them alone!

My mums Italian sandwich:

My tuna avocado sandwhich:

This was so good, I'm going to make one like this at home. You should try it out as well... SO GOOD!


So this was pretty much the Key West part of our trip. Some more interesting pictures:

I've taken these pictures, because we don't have these M&Ms flavours in Germany and I've never seen them before. I've tried the pretzel ones (German, hello?) and they're weird ... chocolaty, sweet, crispy, dry and salty. Really weird.

I remember, they sold this stuff in Germany, when I was in elementary. Nowadays you can't buy it anymore. I tried this to remember and it was just as chemical as I thought! I don't think there was any ham in this ham ... I think we have a law against stuff like this in Germany.

And last one!

We didn't get in. It was already filled.

Well then, see you soon!

I LOVE KEY WEST Part 1

It's the title, it's the topic.
I've only been to Key West for a few days (eh... two), but I liked what I saw. The atmosphere, the look and the people - I really did like it all.
So I'm going to show you a lot of pictures, that's why I'm splitting this entry into two.

But first a little history class:
Key West has actually nothing to do with "West" - it's the southernmost point of the US. Key West is more of a translation mistake. The first English speaking settlers misunderstood the original name Cayo Hueso (means island of bones, long bloody story) and renamed it to Key West. Great huh? Okay, now that you've learned something, we can start with the pics.

This tour was one of the longest (I guess it actually was THE longest) journey during our trip. Driving from Miami to Key West takes some time, but it's very interesting, because the most time, all you see are bridges.
It basically looks like this:

You have tiny tiny islands, that can hold nothin but a road. The height difference between ocean and land is not even 30cm and yes, left side of the lane is water again. Sometime for miles. It can be a little frightning.

So we drove and drove and yeah, nothing interesting happened. Or I don't have it on picture, because we had our film camera with us. We only had a stop here:

And lunch at IHOP. I love diners! It's really sad, we don't have places like IHOP or Denny's in Germany. It's really nice there.

Our food (of course):

So yeah, I had a burger... But if I remember right, it was the only one during my 2 weeks there! I didn't eat the mayonnaise and it was good! What kind of buns are these? Never seen them before.
Maybe you wonder ( I guess you didn't even realize, but I'm telling you anyway), why my parents had breakfast for lunch. In my family we love warm breakfast (basically because we never have time to make one). We love it so much, we could eat it all the time. I love having bacon and eggs for dinner.

A couple of hours later we arrived at Key West (sadly our hotel was quite outside). I have pics of our room, but they look the same like the ones in Cocoa Beach. They look all the same...

This day was almost over, so we decided to just drive to the city and take the ghost tour. Again, I have lots of pics. But it was dark! I can't show you, I'm sorry.
It was a really interesting tour, where a guide takes you through town to all the creepy places, where people died or murdered or I don't know forgot to turn off the oven. Stuff like this. He (his name was Mike) did a good job, it was very funny. Or maybe it was supposed to be scary and he did a miserable job. I don't know, I felt entertained!

That day, we also took the chance to see the boardwalk. It's totally famous, because every evening the people gather to celebrate the sunset. There are lots of artists and strange curiosities and when the last sun beam vanishes, everybody claps. It's great.

On this pic, it's a little too early, there aren't a lot of people there yet. But there will be when it's getting darker.

They also have guys like this! I never thought, they really existed.

It was so cool!


The next entry will be about our second day, Ernest Hemingway, more food and everything else.

Welcome to Miami

2nd part of my Florida vacation diary. Maybe I should have actually written one, because I'm having some hard times to remember...


Miami was our first "real" hotel - It had 10 floors with lots of rooms and a crazy expensive parking spot. All the other place we stayed were more like motels ... so several houses with 3 floors max and a space to park for everyone ... and everyone else. But hey, I liked it everywhere!


SO.
First day.
OH MY GOD, what did I do?
I don't remember.



Oh right! I was at the beach! South Beach. I only got to bath in the sea twice. That was really odd, because I'm used to getting into the ocean every day at least once when I'm on vacation.

I can't say I'm sad about it, because the water is so warm, it's not refreshing or anything.

Because we didn't have much time that day, we decided to just go out for dinner, sleep and have very exciting day the next morning. Yes. We WENT for dinner. My dad had the awesome idea to WALK 35 blocks.
The concierge also told us, it wouldn't take longer than 20 minutes.
He lied.

So we walked.
Had Sushi.

Came back and I was in pain. Me feet, my back, my head ... everything just hurt. And then he started to explain to me, I have to work out if that little walk was exhausting for me. In that moment I hated him really bad. -_-

But oh well, the next day came and we had to do something. So we decided to go see Villa Vizcaya!
It's an awesome (like really AWESOME) Italian Renaissance like estate close to Miami, that was build by James Deering (millionaire thanks to harves machines) in the 1910s (of course) and got a musuem during the 50s.

It's really big and beautful with lots of gardens and woods surrounding it. (btw, that's me under the star fishs, but I looks sorta ugly here...)
It also has lots of fountains like this one:

And check out the pool!

 I would totally live in a place like that, wouldn't you?? Well of course it's way to expensive for me (like multimillions to expensive) but maybe one day ...)

I'm sorry, it's not allowed to take pictures inside, so I tried to find some on google, but they're a little small. Here you go.

After that, we went for lunch at a mall and I found the Christmas in Miami store. I'll make an extra post for this later.

The least expensive (What's wrong in this city?? Everything costs way to much!) was pizza:

How can I say this? I think American pizza is good ... but it's like they try to drown it in oil and if it's not dead then, bury it in cheese.

We then decided to do something for my dad (altough he made me walk my feet off, I'm just too nice) and used the metro mover.

It's small train, that goes in circles (similar to Ringbahn in Berlin) but the drive doesn't take 20 minutes. It's ridiculous! BUT it's for free, so what the heck.
You can see an interesting side of downtown Miami. Btw, did you know Miami and Miami Beach are actually two different cities? I didn't know.

That nigh, we decided to go out for dinner. Again. And go to the Art Deco district. Again. But at least we took the car this time!
The art deco distric is a really cute and colorful district with lots of bars and restaurant. It's just not my cup of tea and I don't know why! I usually like everything between 1880s ~ 1950s ...

We had Mexican food. I LOVE Mexican food, but somehow I don't know anyone else, who likes it.

I had this:

It's like a steak tortilla and it was SO GOOD.  I don't know what they did with the onions (little cup at the left) but they were the best I've ever had.

My mum let my chose for her (she doesn't like Mexian food very much) and I picked chicken enchilada in a green sauce (don't remember what it was):

It was all very interesting, but still Miami wasn't the most interesting city during that trip.