Amalia's Florida Escape

All winter I've been going out on the balcony in New York looking for snow but nothing happened.

Then at the end of  January, Yiayia and Papou said that we should come down to South Beach, Miami for a long weekend because Papi was traveling in Asia on business.

Here we are in the airport: Mommy, Nicolas and me.

When we got to the apartment in South Beach where we lived when I was born, Nicolas took a nap in the courtyard while Mommy worked and I rode my bicycle around.  

It has three wheels and gives directions in Spanish.

Inside the apartment I showed Papou and Yiayia what I had learned in gymnastics and yoga.

One day we went to Flamingo Park where I rode on the dinosaur that used to scare me when I was little.

And went down the big curvy slide

While Mommy and Nicolas sat under the Banyan tree

Then we all rode on the little train. I was the engineer.

Later we went to Espanola Way and had crepes at A La Folie.  I made a design out of the sugar packets.

Then we went to the gelateria place nearby.

I got strawberry. I always get strawberry.

On another day we went to Lincoln Road and I did crafts at Books and Books with my Miami friends Eleni and Phaedra.

I colored this purse.  Do you like it?

On Lincoln Road, Nicolas liked to crawl around on the grassy knoll.

And at night on the grassy knoll I would shoot off into the sky rockets with colored lights, sold by the rocket man, while behind me a man was dancing and vogue-ing.

We were supposed to fly back on Sunday but all the flights were cancelled because of a huge snowstorm in New York, so we went to Eleni and Phaedra's house for dinner and their Mommy cut the King cake.

Finally on Tuesday we got on a plane for New York and Nicolas screamed and made a big fuss until Yiayia showed him Peppa Pig on her phone.

In New York there were huge piles of snow everywhere and the cars were all stuck in the snow.  After school on Wednesday, outside our apartment building, Yiayia and I made our first snowman of the winter.

It was the best snowman on East 80th Street.