Thursday, June 10, 1993

Rode the bus into downtown Miami. Got on the elevated train and rode to the north end of the line. Then we rode back to where we could catch the Tri-Rail train. While we were waiting for it, rain started coming down in torrents, but it didn't last long, and we were under a roof. We rode to Fort Lauderdale and got off, intending to get my mail, which I'd asked Kathy to send to General Delivery in Fort Lauderdale. I had no idea the city was so big; I'd thought it was just a little seaport town that we could easily walk around in, but we'd have had to take a shuttle bus to downtown and then another bus to the Post Office, wherever that happened to be. The shuttle buses only ran once an hour. We'd just missed one, and by the time the next one arrived, it was after 4 o'clock, so we decided to get on the next Tri-Rail train and ride to the end of the line at West Palm Beach.
Florida is surprisingly flat. It's flatter even than Kansas. There are no hills at all, just miles and miles of flat, interspersed with a great many canals and channels and lakes and ponds and rivers and creeks and waterways of all kinds. Everywhere you look there's water.
When we got to West Palm Beach, we stayed on the train and rode back. Reached Miami a little after seven. Transferred to the city elevated train and rode to the south end of the line, which turned out to be at a huge shopping center called Dadeland. There was every kind of store imaginable, but we didn't have time to explore, because we were hungry. We had planned on eating at Sizzler, but it was getting so late we were afraid the buses would stop running and we'd be stranded, so we ate at a fairly good restaurant there at the mall. It was 11 o'clock by the time we got back to the boat.