More Miami Beach
Dec. 17th, 2024 09:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ateolfNow I'm continuing on Saturday. I know I'm going to have to fill in blanks later because I'm having trouble remembering the meals. And some things I'm remembering I'm not sure if I have the days right. We'll see! I think Saturday was the night we went down to the South Pointe area to Joe's Stone Crab and got us some delicious stone crab and other food and took it out onto the beach and ate it. There was the swarm of gulls that kept somewhat attacking this group of people nearby picnicking for what looked like a birthday party. After walking on the beach unexpectedly in my shoes, I made a dumb mistake of just emptying the sand out of them on the floor when we got back to the hotel and there was sand on the floor the whole rest of the trip. As soon as I was doing it I was like, what the fuck am I doing? But then too late, sand! Maybe it's unavoidable anyway. Then...I feel like I might have gotten something mixed up because I know we went back to News Cafe for a cocktail at night the same day we had breakfast there but the breakfast feels like Saturday and the drinks feel like Sunday. So I'll have to figure out what was right. Oh wait. Saturday night we wanted to check out this art thing that was kinda far away and they were having these free shuttle buses for art week so we took one. We waited a good while for it and we kinda gave up and were going to get a lyft but then it finally came while we were waiting for that. They were supposed to run in theory every fifteen minutes and we waited more than thirty. Traffic was crazy congested and busy. But we get on and there's only one seat left so I kinda sat on the floor next to Mary Beth. It was pretty cramped but eventually after a while some people got off and I could sit for real. It made this loop and our stop was pretty much at the very end. We weren't doing anything specific to art week, but there was this kind of unofficial satellite installation that Mary Beth wanted to check out. It was an old motel building converted to an art gallery so different galleries were different hotel rooms and it was all queer art (all we saw was gay male, but we might have missed something, but that was definitely the focus). It was pretty cool but Mary Beth felt like it was hip and she felt out of place so we checked out a couple of floors but didn't stay very long. We made our way back to where we were dropped off across this neat little foot bridge and got a lyft back to "our part of town." Maybe this is after all when we did the cocktail thing at News Cafe. I'll have to check on it.
Sunday:
As you can see by what I said in the lats paragraph, my memories of breakfast and meals around this time are in flux. But we got a lyft up to a northern part of South Beach a good ways away to this outdoor mall Lincoln Street. We saw a Salt and Straw but it wasn't opening for a while. But we walked the length of it. Lots of luxury sports cars parked along the walkway and people taking pictures of and with them. Kinda goofy or whatever, but I guess that's Miami, sun and sports cars. We didn't do a whole lot other than walk it and then got a lyft over to La Sandwicherie and brought a couple of sandwiches over near the beach. I had one with tropical fruit and it was very nice and refreshing and delicious. Oh, and we had tons of tropical smoothies like pretty much almost everywhere we went. Then we went for a swim on the beach. This was a few blocks north of where we were staying. The water there was a little on the dirtier side with lots of clumps of dead seaweed but we swam around it and it was fun. One thing about that part of the beach is the gross advertisements with planes constantly flying around the beach with ads and then this boat with a giant lcd billboard screen with ads. I guess to expected for right there. More on another beach later that didn't have any of those issues! Also, with the art week going on, right in front of our hotel for several blocks they had these giant ass tents set up with exhibits and stuff inside, I guess. They seemed to be the multimedia sort of extravaganza and seemed more like music djs and stuff than art exhibits, but we didn't actually go in. They seemed pretty packed. But a lot of the beach near us was kinda semi-blocked off by that. But where we went on Sunday happened to be just past that anyway. After that we went to the Art Deco Museum. It's pretty small but it's a good springboard for taking a little self-tour of the area. I think they charged us half because there was also an exhibit on African diaspora art but there was some kind of conference about it that was going on so we couldn't really get in to see it. Also, the person at the desk gave a bit of invaluable advice about not just looking at the building exteriors but going into the lobbies when we can because a lot of those are restored as well and have great Art Deco details. So we got a little map and walked around a whole bunch and looked at a bunch of Art Deco buildings and even going into lobbies (most of which are restaurants now so maybe we were a little out of place peeking in but I don't care it was FUN!). Walking around a whole bunch we ended up back at Lincoln Street again this time by foot, so we were able to eat Salt and Straw after all. I think we walked back too with very tired feet. We did something at night, but I'm having trouble remembering now. More on that later, I guess.
Monday:
Now we hit the part of our journey where we did nature stuff! We went down south to Biscayne National Park. This park is almost completely underwater, preserving the natural wildlife of the Biscayne Bay which is all very shallow and has coral reefs and stuff. I'm sure we ate on the way down, again forgetting all this stuff! But we got there and went out on the tour which was out on a boat. I was a little nervous about it. But it was great! The first thing we did was go out to all these very small keys which are full of mangroves and have all these channels. (Now I know the difference between an island and a key! An island is formed geologically and a key is formed by old coral reefs being filled in with soil and land and stuff.) So the first thing was paddleboarding around these mangrove channels. Also had trepidation after our Lake Michigan fiasco but these were easy to navigate around (you know, following the guide). We had a group of five of us total, one other couple and one guy who does lots of national parks. Mangroves are cool and very resilient. At places the channels were narrow, the guide called them tunnels. You'd have to grab the mangrove roots and pull yourself along where there wasn't enough room to paddle. We saw some wildlife in the water, at one point we saw a nurse shark and that was the coolest (it was very small and looked a bit like a somewhat bigger catfish). Then we went to an "island" (okay, probably a key) that's bigger and has a ranger station and ate and took a break and stuff. Then over somewhere else for snorkeling at a coral reef! It was a lot of fun and saw lots of fish. Mary Beth was nervous about it and decided to back out of getting in the water. But the guide eventually set her up with a rope to the boat so she wouldn't get lost. I swam a bunch around and it was pretty great. Okay, I guess I've made a little progress on this. I'm going to stop for a little while and pick up on this later.
Sunday:
As you can see by what I said in the lats paragraph, my memories of breakfast and meals around this time are in flux. But we got a lyft up to a northern part of South Beach a good ways away to this outdoor mall Lincoln Street. We saw a Salt and Straw but it wasn't opening for a while. But we walked the length of it. Lots of luxury sports cars parked along the walkway and people taking pictures of and with them. Kinda goofy or whatever, but I guess that's Miami, sun and sports cars. We didn't do a whole lot other than walk it and then got a lyft over to La Sandwicherie and brought a couple of sandwiches over near the beach. I had one with tropical fruit and it was very nice and refreshing and delicious. Oh, and we had tons of tropical smoothies like pretty much almost everywhere we went. Then we went for a swim on the beach. This was a few blocks north of where we were staying. The water there was a little on the dirtier side with lots of clumps of dead seaweed but we swam around it and it was fun. One thing about that part of the beach is the gross advertisements with planes constantly flying around the beach with ads and then this boat with a giant lcd billboard screen with ads. I guess to expected for right there. More on another beach later that didn't have any of those issues! Also, with the art week going on, right in front of our hotel for several blocks they had these giant ass tents set up with exhibits and stuff inside, I guess. They seemed to be the multimedia sort of extravaganza and seemed more like music djs and stuff than art exhibits, but we didn't actually go in. They seemed pretty packed. But a lot of the beach near us was kinda semi-blocked off by that. But where we went on Sunday happened to be just past that anyway. After that we went to the Art Deco Museum. It's pretty small but it's a good springboard for taking a little self-tour of the area. I think they charged us half because there was also an exhibit on African diaspora art but there was some kind of conference about it that was going on so we couldn't really get in to see it. Also, the person at the desk gave a bit of invaluable advice about not just looking at the building exteriors but going into the lobbies when we can because a lot of those are restored as well and have great Art Deco details. So we got a little map and walked around a whole bunch and looked at a bunch of Art Deco buildings and even going into lobbies (most of which are restaurants now so maybe we were a little out of place peeking in but I don't care it was FUN!). Walking around a whole bunch we ended up back at Lincoln Street again this time by foot, so we were able to eat Salt and Straw after all. I think we walked back too with very tired feet. We did something at night, but I'm having trouble remembering now. More on that later, I guess.
Monday:
Now we hit the part of our journey where we did nature stuff! We went down south to Biscayne National Park. This park is almost completely underwater, preserving the natural wildlife of the Biscayne Bay which is all very shallow and has coral reefs and stuff. I'm sure we ate on the way down, again forgetting all this stuff! But we got there and went out on the tour which was out on a boat. I was a little nervous about it. But it was great! The first thing we did was go out to all these very small keys which are full of mangroves and have all these channels. (Now I know the difference between an island and a key! An island is formed geologically and a key is formed by old coral reefs being filled in with soil and land and stuff.) So the first thing was paddleboarding around these mangrove channels. Also had trepidation after our Lake Michigan fiasco but these were easy to navigate around (you know, following the guide). We had a group of five of us total, one other couple and one guy who does lots of national parks. Mangroves are cool and very resilient. At places the channels were narrow, the guide called them tunnels. You'd have to grab the mangrove roots and pull yourself along where there wasn't enough room to paddle. We saw some wildlife in the water, at one point we saw a nurse shark and that was the coolest (it was very small and looked a bit like a somewhat bigger catfish). Then we went to an "island" (okay, probably a key) that's bigger and has a ranger station and ate and took a break and stuff. Then over somewhere else for snorkeling at a coral reef! It was a lot of fun and saw lots of fish. Mary Beth was nervous about it and decided to back out of getting in the water. But the guide eventually set her up with a rope to the boat so she wouldn't get lost. I swam a bunch around and it was pretty great. Okay, I guess I've made a little progress on this. I'm going to stop for a little while and pick up on this later.
