Te acuerdas the Cuban vacations as a kid?  A 15-minute drive to Miami Beesh that seemed like a 3-hour drive, because you were so excited to get there.  You rented at places like "Sun City", "The Colonial", "Singapore", "Aztec",  etc... When you got there Papi, Mami, Mari, Tia Cusa, Macho, Lola, tu prima Ali, Joseito (the whole familia) got out of the car, but first to go to "el Publi" (Publix) to buy groceries to save money by cooking breakfast, lunch & dinner en el "eficienci", or in english, a rented studio with a full kitchen and 1,000 beds (of all kinds, full size beds here and there, twin beds on every corner facing every direction, and last but not least, la sofacama y un pin-pan-pun...LOL

You swam in the pool for23 hours out of 24, but had to wait 2 hours after eating or snacking to go back in, to avoid "una embolia" .  You met all kinds of kids from different schools and walks of life(Hialeah High, Miami High, Lourdes Academy, HML, etc...) and somehow managed to get along so much better than you ever would outside of this "fantasy" vacation.  You met so many friends and found summer loves.  The highlight of many nights was walking up and down Collins Avenue in a "tribe" and stopping in at Walgreens or Eckerds, never buying anything.  Sometimes you ran into people your parents knew from "La Habana", Artemisa", "Oriente", etc, etc, etc... and they would stand there on the street catching up, for what seemed like an eternity! 

And when you got back to the hotel, you would put on your "trusa" and were ready to go swimming again, but you weren't allowed to go porque "la noche" air was too cold y you were going to get "tremendo catarro".  So you would plug your boombox in somewhere outside near the pool and listen to songs like "Planet Rock" & "Pac-Man Fever" (Que horror!), or sometimes you begged Papi for quarters to play Space Invaders, Asteroids or the Ted Nugent pinball machine in the hotel lobby.

Ay que days those were, I wouldn't have changed it for the world!!!!