030102, 1600hr, florida time.

the weather yesterday sucked so bad, we couldn't really do much around miami. but at the very least, we went to the holocaust memorial in the morning - which turned out to be quite a bad start to the day, because i felt so sad after that visit. i remember the time in secondary school when i first learnt about the tragedy, reading the diary of ann frank and studying history books. it's not like the visit to the memorial brought really shocking revelations, but i think now that i'm older, i find myself troubled by more complex thoughts and emotions than the "oh dear, they died. so sad" type of feeling i had when i was younger. plus, now i understand the magnitude of the death toll - i realise 6 million isn't a small number at all.

after that, we visited villa vizcaya - a winter "palace" of a man called james deering, in the early 20th century. he modelled it after neo-renaissance italy, and the place is really beautiful. not in the gaudy way too. haha. damn, he's so filthy rich! apparently, if taken in today's dollar value, the construction of this mansion cost 0.75 billion dollars. my goodness.

and completely as expected, cos the place is practically littered with antiques. he also purchased parts of old castles or mansions from europe - for example, he imported 3 original antique ceilings from italy and installed them in his house. most of the furniture were hand-crafted, and fabrics hand-woven and painted. the mansion also has a huge garden, which looks a little pathetic right now but was probably beautiful back then. the villa has its own bay of sorts for mr deering's guests to reach the villa by sea. until his heirs sold parts of the property away, the villa also had its personal lagoon which had little islands of sculptures and little boats with which the guests could paddle around to admire the sculptures. because miami wasn't too developed during those years, mr deering also insisted on his own electric phone switch board to handle business calls for his guests, his own onsite fire fighting company, his own farms to take care of food supplies, and even his own railway tracks to bring in whatever building materials which the place didn't have. it's practically a little town of its own. wow.

after villa vizcaya though, the weather turned really disappointing - it started raining quite badly. we tried to visit several places, including a venetian pool, which is a swimming pool modelled after the style of the watery streets of venice. but because it was raining, the sky was dreary-looking and the pool didn't look that impressive from the outside anyway, we didn't go in. though we took such a long time finding that place. after that, we spent the rest of the day at the mall, where i finally bought a new wallet for myself. spent the evening at the south miami beach, which had a pretty happening night life going on, but we spent more time hanging out at this playground in the park opposite the pubs and clubs.

as for today, we just spent the afternoon at a nature reserve, where we rented bikes and basically biked around the place, along the nature trails. there was of course a beach, so we spent half the time just bumming on the beach - i think i'll never get sick of the beach, it's just so relaxing. we left the park for a late lunch, and right now, we're parked by another beach, and waiting for the sunset, before we set off for key west. in all, it's been a beautiful and enjoyable day. i just hope we get a good internet connection tonight, so i can upload all these journal entries i've accumulated over the past week. truth be told, i'm suffering from internet withdrawal sympthoms. haha.