Beach, Miami
Dec. 17th, 2024 08:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ateolfJust got back from a long vacation in Miami! I'm going to try to post as best as I can from memory but it's well over a week of stuff and I'll probably have to toss in some updates after I consult Mary Beth's itinerary notes. And the big events of the trip started off with a bang the night before. I slammed my foot and toe into a suitcase on the floor...twice! Two different suitcases in two different rooms. And both times it hurt like a motherfucker. I'm all hobbling around and shit. Then later I took off my socks and saw that my right "ring" toe had a blue toenail. So, a great way to start things off right before I'm about to be doing a whole lot of walking out of town! It got better quickly, mostly. A whole lot of progress after the first night and then slowly improving what was left to improve. Now it mostly feels normal but it's still a gnarly color, it started off a powder blue and now it's a very dark blue. I kept my right shoe laced pretty loosely, just enough to walk around with. I was limping a little bit the first couple days but it didn't take long to walk normal again. And mostly the pain was gone after that first night. I was mostly not noticing it at all by the middle of last week, still keeping the shoe pretty loose though. Now I'll have an attempt to break things down day-by-day and we'll see how that goes.
Friday:
Get up and our flight out was an early afternoon flight. Things went pretty smoothly. We had a layover in Charlotte. It was a comfortably long amount of time, but not crazy long. I got a little bit of Shake Shack at the airport. Then we arrived at Miami, pretty late at night. Got our rental car, navigating the treacherous MIA. They were all, pick any car from this row and the second car I see is EXACTLY our new car, color and everything (exterior and interior). I thought it would be very handy to deal with something pretty familiar, especially with how new cars are so I took that. They made up for how easy it was to get the car with how much of a pain it was to get it out of the lot. They're all, just grab a car, the keys are in the ignition and it feels so simple, but then there's a bottleneck with all the actual checking out while you're driving out and it took forever. So we got to Miami Beach and our hotel on Ocean Drive pretty late. The parking garage we used was right around the corner so that ended up being convenient. You have to get on the actual sandy beach to see the ocean so we didn't right away. But it was late, after midnight, and we walked down to the one place that was open, a diner called Big Pink that has ridiculously big things of food. It was alright. Right before we leave, I come back from the bathroom and this busser was kinda flirting with Mary Beth. When I get to the table, he straight up says "mucho gringo" and laughs. So yeah, that happened! He was acting friendly but it was kinda weird. I guess if the shoe fits... We get back to the hotel and...sleep!
Saturday:
The next couple of days we stayed put on Miami Beach. A lot of walking around the area. First off, I knew that it was either in or nearby the Art Deco Historic District, but even that didn't prepared me for just HOW MUCH Art Deco there is throughout Miami Beach, especially South Beach where we were (but even to a lesser extent up into North Beach as I'd find out). But yeah, we were in the thick of it. Especially on Ocean Drive, you have all the landmark hotels and some other big landmark hotels the blocks over (Collins and Washington). But then I wasn't prepared for the fact that like for a couple of miles on all these streets, ALMOST ALL of the buildings are amazing Art Deco pieces. Aside from the notable landmarks, just about every other whatever building in between is some awesome Art Deco even if on a smaller scale. It's pretty incredible to walk around and see. I learned that Miami Beach has the highest concentration of Art Deco in the world and even if I'd known that, it wouldn't prepare me for actually HOW MUCH there is. The first weekend we were there, it was pretty hectically crowded on Miami Beach. It was some big Art Week thing and we found out that it was apparently a very big deal. I imagine there was some stuff that I'd consider worthwhile art, but a lot of it seemed kinda interactive digital spectacle and not so much our thing. But it was very packed all that weekend. Also, our hotel had VERY thin walls. They had notices about being quiet and stuff, but all that first weekend there were people who were talking (what sounded) very loudly all night. And it changed every night for the first several nights who we'd hear. That first Friday night I was in kind of a fugue half-dream state constantly hearing talking and sleeping and stuff. The next few nights I'd hear the talking but was so ready to conk out that I ended up mostly sleeping through it. I'm not sure but I think for breakfast we ate at News Cafe which was right on the corner next to us. I had some delicious chilaquiles that were unlike any I'd had before, because they wait to put the sauce on til it's at the table so the chips are still very hard instead of merging with the sauce. Then we went to some museums. First it was The Wolfsonian and they had a nice selection of art. Then we went to the World Erotic Art Museum and it was crazy how much stuff they have. There's a little bit on the lower floor and it's cool and nice but then you go upstairs and it's this crazily packed labyrinth that has so much stuff. Even some sketches by Picasso and Egon Schiele (and probably a few more big names that I'm forgetting) and the infamous pornographic drawings of Disney characters by one of the Disney artists. Wow! This post is going to take a fuck of a long time to finish! It was a LONG trip and we packed in a LOT of stuff. Well, this will end the first for now and I'll try to see when I can get in more!
Friday:
Get up and our flight out was an early afternoon flight. Things went pretty smoothly. We had a layover in Charlotte. It was a comfortably long amount of time, but not crazy long. I got a little bit of Shake Shack at the airport. Then we arrived at Miami, pretty late at night. Got our rental car, navigating the treacherous MIA. They were all, pick any car from this row and the second car I see is EXACTLY our new car, color and everything (exterior and interior). I thought it would be very handy to deal with something pretty familiar, especially with how new cars are so I took that. They made up for how easy it was to get the car with how much of a pain it was to get it out of the lot. They're all, just grab a car, the keys are in the ignition and it feels so simple, but then there's a bottleneck with all the actual checking out while you're driving out and it took forever. So we got to Miami Beach and our hotel on Ocean Drive pretty late. The parking garage we used was right around the corner so that ended up being convenient. You have to get on the actual sandy beach to see the ocean so we didn't right away. But it was late, after midnight, and we walked down to the one place that was open, a diner called Big Pink that has ridiculously big things of food. It was alright. Right before we leave, I come back from the bathroom and this busser was kinda flirting with Mary Beth. When I get to the table, he straight up says "mucho gringo" and laughs. So yeah, that happened! He was acting friendly but it was kinda weird. I guess if the shoe fits... We get back to the hotel and...sleep!
Saturday:
The next couple of days we stayed put on Miami Beach. A lot of walking around the area. First off, I knew that it was either in or nearby the Art Deco Historic District, but even that didn't prepared me for just HOW MUCH Art Deco there is throughout Miami Beach, especially South Beach where we were (but even to a lesser extent up into North Beach as I'd find out). But yeah, we were in the thick of it. Especially on Ocean Drive, you have all the landmark hotels and some other big landmark hotels the blocks over (Collins and Washington). But then I wasn't prepared for the fact that like for a couple of miles on all these streets, ALMOST ALL of the buildings are amazing Art Deco pieces. Aside from the notable landmarks, just about every other whatever building in between is some awesome Art Deco even if on a smaller scale. It's pretty incredible to walk around and see. I learned that Miami Beach has the highest concentration of Art Deco in the world and even if I'd known that, it wouldn't prepare me for actually HOW MUCH there is. The first weekend we were there, it was pretty hectically crowded on Miami Beach. It was some big Art Week thing and we found out that it was apparently a very big deal. I imagine there was some stuff that I'd consider worthwhile art, but a lot of it seemed kinda interactive digital spectacle and not so much our thing. But it was very packed all that weekend. Also, our hotel had VERY thin walls. They had notices about being quiet and stuff, but all that first weekend there were people who were talking (what sounded) very loudly all night. And it changed every night for the first several nights who we'd hear. That first Friday night I was in kind of a fugue half-dream state constantly hearing talking and sleeping and stuff. The next few nights I'd hear the talking but was so ready to conk out that I ended up mostly sleeping through it. I'm not sure but I think for breakfast we ate at News Cafe which was right on the corner next to us. I had some delicious chilaquiles that were unlike any I'd had before, because they wait to put the sauce on til it's at the table so the chips are still very hard instead of merging with the sauce. Then we went to some museums. First it was The Wolfsonian and they had a nice selection of art. Then we went to the World Erotic Art Museum and it was crazy how much stuff they have. There's a little bit on the lower floor and it's cool and nice but then you go upstairs and it's this crazily packed labyrinth that has so much stuff. Even some sketches by Picasso and Egon Schiele (and probably a few more big names that I'm forgetting) and the infamous pornographic drawings of Disney characters by one of the Disney artists. Wow! This post is going to take a fuck of a long time to finish! It was a LONG trip and we packed in a LOT of stuff. Well, this will end the first for now and I'll try to see when I can get in more!
