Arriving at the hostel on Friday I had braced myself for an unpleasant stay. We were booked into an 8-10 bed dorm and it was super hot. When we arrived there was a lot of people everywhere and we found out the hostel was completely booked out. It seemed that we had arrived for Urban Music Week, which is a celebration of rap and hip hop music all along ocean drive (the main street along the beach). So I was really ready for the worst when we checked in, BUT becaus...

We flew in from Houston and arrived about 11am. It was a great contrast going from the country to the beach and hot tropical weather. We were only in Miami a few shorts hours, long enough to catch a cab from the airport to the cruise terminal. That afternoon we were setting sail on a 4 day cruise out to the Bahamas and back with Royal Caribbean. The boarding process went pretty smoothly. They take your suitcase as soon as you arrive and bring it to your room late...

The morning of our drive to Texas we were up before the sun and fell out of bed into our car (that was still there). We managed to beat the morning traffic and waited until we were out of town before our breakfast stop at burger king. We still had another 700kms to go but we were averaging 140km/hr (which didn't seem to bother highway patrol), so we burned through it pretty quick. We arrived at Beaumont Ranch early in the afternoon because we wanted to spend as m...

Driving into New Orleans was a bit of scenery change…on every level. Leaving Memphis there is a lot of forest and greenery but as you get closer and further south, it slowly starts to turn into wetlands and before your know it, you are driving on a bridge over the wetlands and have been for the last 50kms. I'm not sure if it was just our part of town but it was a really low socioeconomic area. So it was doors locked and windows up as we drove to our hostel, w...

We didn't get into Memphis until after 7pm and we wanted to have dinner in the main part of town, so by the time we checked in, got changed and caught a cab downtown, it was 10pm. Fortunately everything was till open. The main street in Memphis is called Beale Street and is full of blues bars. We had dinner at the B.B. King blues bar where a cover band was playing classic blues songs. After dinner we wandered up and down the street - like I said everything was op...