I arrived in Miami in April 1998 and immediately was impressed with the traffic, which was usually quiet and no traffic jams. Florida law is strict and all commercial, industrial or service must have its own parking to serve its clientele. So the streets are not full of cars and traffic is unimpeded and flows easily. A few times I had so much driving pleasure as in the beautiful city of Miami.

I made this trip in the company of my friend Rondon Gomes, who was a great companion and had a lot of patience to wait, since he is much younger than me and goes much more quickly. Once we arrived, we took a Hertz bus from the airport and we get the nice car we had rented in advance.

We ask a Ford Fiesta and come across a Japanese car, a Suzuki Esteem, so we went to the office of the company to know why the exchange. They told that as we reserve and pay in advance, we got upgraded, that car was far superior to the Ford Fiesta. Earlier we were surprised, but then we stay fans of the car, which was very soft, quiet and with a great motor, plus all the options of comfort.

We left Miami for sliding with that big car, the radio playing a sensational jazz and we feel kings of the hill, missing only we head to Fort Lauderdale, Greater Miami, where we would sleep and find our hotel. We were lucky, the hotel was simple, but wonderful and very spacious, our apartment, with living room, two bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom, plus the pool which was right in front of the door of our apartment because the hotel was single deck.

Moreover, we soon discovered that the hotel was one block from the beach, in the main avenue of the city. We chose Fort Lauderdale because it is in this city which was the largest mall in the world, where we would do almost all our purchases and because it was much easier to make our trips leaving this beautiful city, like the incredible journey we made to the NASA Space Center and the city of Orlando, where we visited Disney World and many other attractions such as Universal Studios and Hard Rock Cafe.

On arrival at the hotel a scare, the manager said there was no reserve on behalf of Rondon and that the hotel was packed, we were shocked because we made the reservation well in advance, but then Rondon think to ask if there was some reservation on behalf of Gomes, for there the surname comes before the name and it worked, the reservation was confirmed and we went into our apartment just enough to leave our bags and leave, we wanted to do some shopping and there was a supermarket nearby. Then we eat a pizza at Vance Pizza.

The Sawgrass Mills, the largest mall in the world at the time, was really huge, had only one floor, but stretched for hundreds of meters with shops of all sizes and all tastes, was so great that at the end of second day We were strolling through the mall we found a feeding area that we had not yet seen, with a Rain Forest Network cafeteria. I had never seen a mall so extense.

After two days traveling to Orlando, we went back to Fort Lauderdale to complete our purchases, we said goodbye to Florida and make our bags to go back to Brazil. It was an unforgettable trip, everything went as planned, except that I caught a cold in the NASA Space Center (it was raining) and that we decided not visiting Tampa to stay another day in Miami, it was worth it and I think that was one of the best international travel I've done.

Lupércio Mundim