bedrock of our travels. Fortunately we found the diner, and without going too
far out of our way. We both ate massive sandwiches and shared a piece of
cake, and then I ordered coke with a shot of cherry. This is 'an American
thing' which I felt that I had failed to take full advantage of. However, when the
drink came and the fruit syrup refused to mix with the coke I suddenly felt less
hard done to.
The rest of the drive to Miami was on busy roads and the route to our hotel
seemed very complicated - due mainly to my navigational skills being left in
Harvey’s glove compartment. Eventually we did reach the Holiday Inn
Express, a nice, clean hotel - if a bit soulless. Emma immediately collapsed
unconscious on the bed, hardly surprising given the last two days, and I re-
evaluated our budget.
By the time Emma resurfaced I had arrived at the very precise
conclusion that the amount we had left to spend was 'a lot'. This was working
on the exchange rate from November, which we knew had changed in our
favour during the intervening months, so we probably had 'more than a lot'
left. It was quite gratifying to think that all of my careful (or to use Emma’s
word ‘anal’) recording of our finances had been rewarded by us keeping well
within budget. We went out for a very expensive and decadent meal to
celebrate.
The Red Lobster is a restaurant chain that we had nearly visited in
New Orleans and again in Sarasota. In Miami we actually made it in and
discovered that it was more posh than we had imagined - we had put it on a
par with Beefeaters in the UK. I set the tone for the evening by ordering a