Living in Miami's famous "South Beach" art deco district for a week is a great experience. If you've seen Robin Williams film "The Birdcage", our hotel was only a few doors away from the club where the film was shot!

Night time is when things really start to happen though. With clubs, bars all along "the strip", it's a cruisers paradise...

The Art Deco area is really famous for its architecture - and rightly so. The local council must approve all and any building that goes on, helping to ensure that even recent buildings have that distinctive 50's style.

Hotels are no exception: The Tides, used in the famous cult movie Gattica is one of the areas top hotels.

The beach itself is gorgeous - but a beach is a beach...

I always start my day the way I intend to continue, with an orgy of sugar consumption! Here I am about to tuck in to French toast with loads of maple syrup and fresh fruit salad (ie, not out of a tin).

Mari on the other hand always preferred the healthier option, and either went for a bagel, or for a huge bowl of fresh fruit. Here you can see her enjoying a Virgin Pina Colada - at 08:30!

Breakfast became a ritual at the famous News Cafe, where we could sit and watch the world walk by (or roller blade by in this place!)

Like them or hate them, roller blades (or roller babes as I called them) in this part of the world are everywhere...

It was nice to occasionally find a spot of shade and take a break from constant relaxing. The weather was perfect for the whole time we were there, and we thawed out nicely!

Even the Beach Patrol Headquarters, off the main drag, but very much in the public eye has to fit in to the strict building guidelines.

Nothing should be too much trouble in the tropical paradise, especially mowing the lawn.

Not exactly your typical store display, this "figure" was made entirely from plastic forks!

And this one from baby bottle teats!

You may get the idea that we were relaxing far too much, but actually, we dived almost everyday, and only did the other stuff when we had a bit of spare time. Here is our trusty dive boat: "Scuba-do" down in Key Largo where we completed our Wreck Diving course.

Our ever contentious dive master. It was on this dive that we nearly lost Mari on a wreck called "The Duane" on an old Coast Guard cutter sunk as part of the artificial reef project. We were diving in a 3.5 knot current (which may not sound like much - but it is!) when Mari was swept off the buoy line at about 15 metres. In the Gulf Stream current, she would have arrived in Cuba a few days later had we not managed to grab her and drag her back.

 The food was great, but as usual in America, too plentiful. This "Surf 'n Turf" was a single portion which Mari and I shared. One each would have killed us.

 I took this for Richard, it's got to be the American equivalent of his current Land Rover Defender 90 (more on that here). This beast has a 6.5 litre V8 monster under the hood and goes just about anywhere. Perfect for the shopping, eh?

You get to see some very odd sights in Miami: like these twin "fur covered" Yamaha R1 race bikes. This isn't a paint job, it's fluffy synthetic fur which has been glued on and is about 2mm thick!

The stereotypical image of the American Biker - Miami style.