From Key West back to Miami

On Tuesday we got up early to return the car in Miami on time. We had a three-hour drive ahead of us. First, we had breakfast at ihop (I learned something new: it stands for 'international house of pancakes' 😂) and then we could drive to the airport without any traffic jams. On the way, we stopped once to refuel, where I was amazed again by the incredibly cheap gasoline prices: a full tank costs $34 here, the gallon is between $2.50 and $2.80, which means a price of about 70 Swiss Rappen per liter. Crazy! No wonder everyone has a car here! (As an anecdote, while researching the route to Sawgrass Mills Mall, I found that the bus would have taken longer in the early evening than walking! 5 hours vs 7 hours 😂 Also, a friendly Uber driver later told us that public transportation in Florida is a disaster, sometimes you wait an hour or longer for the bus...phew!!)
But back to the drive: returning the car was just as uncomplicated as picking it up...everything was very well signposted and the approximately 10 car rental companies were nicely spread out over three floors. We drove in, a man scanned the electronic code on the car, gave me a receipt, and that was it. No lining up, nothing 😀😀 100 points for National Car!
At Miami Airport, we first tried the 'Chicken Fries' at Burger King for $1.69, which didn't have much flavor. Then an Uber took us to the hotel, where unfortunately we had to wait another hour for check-in. But at least we got a glass of 'champagne' (I doubt it was real champagne, it tasted more like cheap Prosecco 😂). In the afternoon, we checked out the stores in the area and had a meal at Starbucks. I was very tired but could hardly sleep because of the many party guests around our hotel 🙈
On Wednesday, we took an Uber to 'Aventura Mall', a large shopping center where we had been in 2014. The drive took almost 1.5 hours instead of 30 minutes due to road works 🙈 Like starving lions, we ate a slightly dry almond croissant there (0 points, next week I'll get one from Benny's Bio Panetteria in Bremgarten again 😂)
Since I knew that not many stores in the shopping mall would interest me, I walked in the blistering heat to my bargain stores Marshalls and Nordstrom Rack, which were about 15 minutes away. Of course, I didn't encounter any other human beings on the sidewalk except for a woman with a dog and a man waiting for the bus, because who walks in the USA, after all?! 😂
I stayed there for a few hours and then returned to the mall, where I was greeted again by very welcome frosty temperatures. Unfortunately, I slowly started getting a headache, which developed into a (fortunately not so severe) migraine by the evening. So I couldn't enjoy dinner at the Cheesecake Factory because there were alternating minutes of feeling good and 'I feel sick' and 'I can't feel my teeth' phases (migraine, you bitch!) We took the dessert 'to go' hoping for improvement later and drove back to the hotel, where an unpleasant surprise awaited us: the air conditioning was turned off! Hello sauna! A friendly man tried to fix it but couldn't, so he offered us a room two floors higher in the 'Ocean-View Suite'. Nice! At this point, I was fine with anything, as long as I had a bed, peace, and no light! About three hours later, I felt better again and at 11 pm I finally had the quite sour 'Key Lime Cheesecake'.

On Thursday, we had breakfast at a restaurant with a funny name and an interesting concept: it's called 'Bacon Bitch' and the dishes are called 'Bitches' there 😂
We checked out some more shops and then had lunch at a Mexican restaurant that had been recommended to us. It was soooo delicious, but as usual, way too much!