More Miami
Dec. 18th, 2024 08:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ateolfNot a whole lot to report for the day that was yesterday. It was back to work. We did our Superlo grocery run at night. I caught back up on some sleep from the huge deficit the night before (more on that later) but my body told me this morning that it's not quite there yet as far as catching up completely goes. Anyway, let's see how much of this I can continue.
We're picking back up at Thursday after the stuff at Wynwood. So we head back over to a museum on Miami Beach called The Bass. It had some good art. It had quite a few Nam June Paik pieces (I should have remembered that he spent the end of his life in Miami Beach if it was mentioned in that documentary, I assume it would have been but anyway, didn't remember or know that). Then we cut over back to the mainland for another art museum called the Perez. It was really big and had lots of stuff. We wanted to spend even so much more time than we did, but we had dinner reservations at this somewhat fancy Cuban place. (I changed into the one set of nice clothes I brought for the trip in the car in the museum's parking garage.) We drove over to Little Havana (Calle Ocho) and went to La Trova. They had very nice food and we continued our two-in-a-row theme because they also had live music. A salsa (of course!) band played. During one song there was a horn solo and I was confused because the trumpet player was currently playing güiro (you know, the wooden fish you scrape) but then I look across the room and see one of the bartenders just busting out on the trombone from behind the bar. When the solo was over, he hung it back up in its special place in the bar area. Well, that was some fine showmanship! There wasn't a space for dance floor per se but people just filled the walkways with the dancing (not us, we're dorks). And especially when the band came back on for the second set it was just packed with people in the aisles (because, I assume, of the more time for alcohol to get consumed).
Friday:
I was a bit slow in the morning on Friday and caused us to run late. We had a tour scheduled at this State park called The Barnacle, which some guy's house on the sea when this was all frontier somewhere around the turn of the century. We were late (partly due to Siri being confusing at the last minute, happened a bit during the trip) but we were the only ones there for the tour and the guide was super duper nice and gave us the tour. It's mostly the old house which the guy built and later raised from one story to two stories (moving the first story up to the second floor, it was already on stilts as it's facing the ocean, but still!). It was a pretty interesting tour. It has a bit of a park on the grounds and we looked at that a minute before moving on. Oh yeah, and when we got there I'd been in so much of a confused hurry that when I put in to pay for the parking on my phone, I'd set it all up except for hitting the final pay and confirm button so it wasn't til after the tour that I realized I hadn't actually paid for the parking! It was still up on my phone so I quickly hit that button and ran and checked on the car and everything was alright. Whew! Then we walked around the area. This is in Coconut Grove, a neighborhood in the southern part of Miami. There was a French restaurant called Le Bouchon du Grove nearby that we had lunch at. It was really damn good. We started with some very delicious escargot and I had a chicken fricassé that was so insanely deep and rich and so so good. And it came in a big pot. I ended with some crème brûlée (yum!). Across the street was another Books & Books so we went. It's a chain bookstore but the selections seem to be pretty well curated. I picked up a couple more: Severance by Ling Ma and The Only Ones by Carola Dibbell. Then we had a compare/contrast opportunity with our next place, kinda nearby but a little to the north. We went to Vizcaya, another house-turned-museum, James Deering's mansion. He went for a big lavish European style house. It was much less interesting but fun to visit. We went back to Miami Beach for dinner reservations at an Italian restaurant called Il Pastoralio. I was still crazy full from the big lunch, but managed. Thankfully they had really delicious food with smaller portions (I had ravioli ossobuco that was really nice). It was a crazy windy night and Mary Beth wanted to take a walk down on the beach so we went. I took my shoes off this time. She waded in the ocean. It was night and windy and there were all the huge tents from art week being disassembled around us. Mostly the frames were left, with giant lights on it all and construction equipment waiting to be used again in the morning. After a bit of hanging around we walked the length of the beach down to where our hotel is. The wind blowing through the giant tent-frames made this awesome eerie sound. I got to walk across the street barefoot (adventure!).
Saturday:
The next day was a bit more of nature-y stuff. We went down to Homestead again to the Fruit & Spice Park. It's just a big park focused on what our guide called (um...a word that combines anthro- with agriculture or something like that but I can't remember exactly how it's formed) ...something. Having been so stressed about the previous day's tardiness we got up and went super duper early. We had a tour scheduled but we had time to walk around most of the grounds before then. We were told we could eat anything that's on the ground but not pick anything off plants. Being in Miami in December was amazingly great for the most part, but this is one place the summer would have been better. There wasn't a lot to pick on the ground. Most things that were on the ground were either smashed up or rotten by then. And the fruit that's in season isn't as extensive as what you'd see in the summer. ... I am fucking up. This is what we did on Sunday not Saturday. I'll let that stand since I wrote so much and you can just refer back to it after getting ahead! Ugh! I still have more to talk about it anyway. But yes, Saturday was more of a nature-y day again (not down in Homestead but the southern part of Miami). We went to this park with a little beach and "archipelago" (round man-made lagoon right next to the ocean). We walked around some and then were on the very opposite side of the lagoon when it just started raining hard. So we ran back to the car. Our next destination was the Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden. It's pretty huge. We park in the back lot and it's raining again. We go in the entrance and don't see anywhere to pay and I thought there'd be a real place to pay a little further on but don't see anything so we walked around inside for a little while. There was a good bit more rain and getting soaked and trying to find our way around and getting confused by the map because we actually parked inside the park (in the middle!) so when we got to the parking lot, we thought we were leaving so didn't understand how the layout was working. But then we went around again and realized we had walked through the gate where you're supposed to pay the first time and finally paid. Then we took a little tram tour around the whole thing. They have lots of tropical gardens and then the other side is lowlands similar to the Everglades. They have a butterfly enclosure and after the tram tour we went through that and that was pretty awesome, walking amongst all the butterflies. After that we went out to this place called El Rey de las Fritas. It's another Cuban place and they have these one-of-a-kind sandwiches with crispy shoestring fries on them. It's like ground beef but not a hamburger and seasoned a bright red. Really good fried stuff! Then we were kinda out west and there was a record store also out west though not in the immediate area. There aren't many record stores in Miami that looked like they do cds at all, but this one I found did so we went over to Yesterday and Today Records. It's on the upper floor of a strip mall, a pretty small store. They seem to mostly specialize in like psych rock and some prog and stuff...things that are adjacent to stuff I like and with some overlap but not quite it. I did go through their cds. Again, a small place with not a huge selection and they also were more vinyl but I did find a few things: Vangelis: Ignacio, The Soft Machine: s/t, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk: (I, Eye, Aye). (Mostly used but The Soft Machine was new and sealed and priced like used.) The proprietor was nice and liked my Coltrane shirt.
Sunday:
Okay, now we backtrack to what I wrote at the beginning of Saturday! We did all I said about the Fruit & Spice Park. There was one fruit on the ground we were able to eat. I forget its name. Think it started with a 'c'. Then we took our guided tour. Once again it was just the two of us and once again the guide was super nice. She drove us around on a cart. And we took a look around at everything. Oh yeah, and this was a TASTING tour! And since we were with the guide, she was able to pick a few things off of the trees and bushes and stuff for us to eat. She also brought along a sample tray with a bunch of the fruits we'd see. But we got a few extras. There was a white guava that she managed to find on the ground and that was the tastiest thing I thought we ate. It was all cool and awesome. Again though, in the summer when I imagine the mangoes are in season (and they have a crazy number of different species) that would be amazing to do. Also all the other tropical fruit that would be in season. Fresh off the trees! It was still awesome in the winter. Next we went to a fruit stand (a very big fruit stand) called... Robert Is Here. That's its name. They do fruit shakes and smoothies (we had so so so many tropical fruit smoothies on this trip and it was awesome). We both had drinks with black sapote which was the only place we were able to find that! It was really good, chocolatey tasting. They also have a petting zoo and I touched a goat and we saw some tortoises fucking. I should probably stop again for now. But, I'm finally getting ALMOST there! I have noticed lots of things I've missed and will need to go back to and fill in (and I've missed MOST of the food talk), but still. This trip recap is at least getting there.
We're picking back up at Thursday after the stuff at Wynwood. So we head back over to a museum on Miami Beach called The Bass. It had some good art. It had quite a few Nam June Paik pieces (I should have remembered that he spent the end of his life in Miami Beach if it was mentioned in that documentary, I assume it would have been but anyway, didn't remember or know that). Then we cut over back to the mainland for another art museum called the Perez. It was really big and had lots of stuff. We wanted to spend even so much more time than we did, but we had dinner reservations at this somewhat fancy Cuban place. (I changed into the one set of nice clothes I brought for the trip in the car in the museum's parking garage.) We drove over to Little Havana (Calle Ocho) and went to La Trova. They had very nice food and we continued our two-in-a-row theme because they also had live music. A salsa (of course!) band played. During one song there was a horn solo and I was confused because the trumpet player was currently playing güiro (you know, the wooden fish you scrape) but then I look across the room and see one of the bartenders just busting out on the trombone from behind the bar. When the solo was over, he hung it back up in its special place in the bar area. Well, that was some fine showmanship! There wasn't a space for dance floor per se but people just filled the walkways with the dancing (not us, we're dorks). And especially when the band came back on for the second set it was just packed with people in the aisles (because, I assume, of the more time for alcohol to get consumed).
Friday:
I was a bit slow in the morning on Friday and caused us to run late. We had a tour scheduled at this State park called The Barnacle, which some guy's house on the sea when this was all frontier somewhere around the turn of the century. We were late (partly due to Siri being confusing at the last minute, happened a bit during the trip) but we were the only ones there for the tour and the guide was super duper nice and gave us the tour. It's mostly the old house which the guy built and later raised from one story to two stories (moving the first story up to the second floor, it was already on stilts as it's facing the ocean, but still!). It was a pretty interesting tour. It has a bit of a park on the grounds and we looked at that a minute before moving on. Oh yeah, and when we got there I'd been in so much of a confused hurry that when I put in to pay for the parking on my phone, I'd set it all up except for hitting the final pay and confirm button so it wasn't til after the tour that I realized I hadn't actually paid for the parking! It was still up on my phone so I quickly hit that button and ran and checked on the car and everything was alright. Whew! Then we walked around the area. This is in Coconut Grove, a neighborhood in the southern part of Miami. There was a French restaurant called Le Bouchon du Grove nearby that we had lunch at. It was really damn good. We started with some very delicious escargot and I had a chicken fricassé that was so insanely deep and rich and so so good. And it came in a big pot. I ended with some crème brûlée (yum!). Across the street was another Books & Books so we went. It's a chain bookstore but the selections seem to be pretty well curated. I picked up a couple more: Severance by Ling Ma and The Only Ones by Carola Dibbell. Then we had a compare/contrast opportunity with our next place, kinda nearby but a little to the north. We went to Vizcaya, another house-turned-museum, James Deering's mansion. He went for a big lavish European style house. It was much less interesting but fun to visit. We went back to Miami Beach for dinner reservations at an Italian restaurant called Il Pastoralio. I was still crazy full from the big lunch, but managed. Thankfully they had really delicious food with smaller portions (I had ravioli ossobuco that was really nice). It was a crazy windy night and Mary Beth wanted to take a walk down on the beach so we went. I took my shoes off this time. She waded in the ocean. It was night and windy and there were all the huge tents from art week being disassembled around us. Mostly the frames were left, with giant lights on it all and construction equipment waiting to be used again in the morning. After a bit of hanging around we walked the length of the beach down to where our hotel is. The wind blowing through the giant tent-frames made this awesome eerie sound. I got to walk across the street barefoot (adventure!).
Saturday:
The next day was a bit more of nature-y stuff. We went down to Homestead again to the Fruit & Spice Park. It's just a big park focused on what our guide called (um...a word that combines anthro- with agriculture or something like that but I can't remember exactly how it's formed) ...something. Having been so stressed about the previous day's tardiness we got up and went super duper early. We had a tour scheduled but we had time to walk around most of the grounds before then. We were told we could eat anything that's on the ground but not pick anything off plants. Being in Miami in December was amazingly great for the most part, but this is one place the summer would have been better. There wasn't a lot to pick on the ground. Most things that were on the ground were either smashed up or rotten by then. And the fruit that's in season isn't as extensive as what you'd see in the summer. ... I am fucking up. This is what we did on Sunday not Saturday. I'll let that stand since I wrote so much and you can just refer back to it after getting ahead! Ugh! I still have more to talk about it anyway. But yes, Saturday was more of a nature-y day again (not down in Homestead but the southern part of Miami). We went to this park with a little beach and "archipelago" (round man-made lagoon right next to the ocean). We walked around some and then were on the very opposite side of the lagoon when it just started raining hard. So we ran back to the car. Our next destination was the Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden. It's pretty huge. We park in the back lot and it's raining again. We go in the entrance and don't see anywhere to pay and I thought there'd be a real place to pay a little further on but don't see anything so we walked around inside for a little while. There was a good bit more rain and getting soaked and trying to find our way around and getting confused by the map because we actually parked inside the park (in the middle!) so when we got to the parking lot, we thought we were leaving so didn't understand how the layout was working. But then we went around again and realized we had walked through the gate where you're supposed to pay the first time and finally paid. Then we took a little tram tour around the whole thing. They have lots of tropical gardens and then the other side is lowlands similar to the Everglades. They have a butterfly enclosure and after the tram tour we went through that and that was pretty awesome, walking amongst all the butterflies. After that we went out to this place called El Rey de las Fritas. It's another Cuban place and they have these one-of-a-kind sandwiches with crispy shoestring fries on them. It's like ground beef but not a hamburger and seasoned a bright red. Really good fried stuff! Then we were kinda out west and there was a record store also out west though not in the immediate area. There aren't many record stores in Miami that looked like they do cds at all, but this one I found did so we went over to Yesterday and Today Records. It's on the upper floor of a strip mall, a pretty small store. They seem to mostly specialize in like psych rock and some prog and stuff...things that are adjacent to stuff I like and with some overlap but not quite it. I did go through their cds. Again, a small place with not a huge selection and they also were more vinyl but I did find a few things: Vangelis: Ignacio, The Soft Machine: s/t, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk: (I, Eye, Aye). (Mostly used but The Soft Machine was new and sealed and priced like used.) The proprietor was nice and liked my Coltrane shirt.
Sunday:
Okay, now we backtrack to what I wrote at the beginning of Saturday! We did all I said about the Fruit & Spice Park. There was one fruit on the ground we were able to eat. I forget its name. Think it started with a 'c'. Then we took our guided tour. Once again it was just the two of us and once again the guide was super nice. She drove us around on a cart. And we took a look around at everything. Oh yeah, and this was a TASTING tour! And since we were with the guide, she was able to pick a few things off of the trees and bushes and stuff for us to eat. She also brought along a sample tray with a bunch of the fruits we'd see. But we got a few extras. There was a white guava that she managed to find on the ground and that was the tastiest thing I thought we ate. It was all cool and awesome. Again though, in the summer when I imagine the mangoes are in season (and they have a crazy number of different species) that would be amazing to do. Also all the other tropical fruit that would be in season. Fresh off the trees! It was still awesome in the winter. Next we went to a fruit stand (a very big fruit stand) called... Robert Is Here. That's its name. They do fruit shakes and smoothies (we had so so so many tropical fruit smoothies on this trip and it was awesome). We both had drinks with black sapote which was the only place we were able to find that! It was really good, chocolatey tasting. They also have a petting zoo and I touched a goat and we saw some tortoises fucking. I should probably stop again for now. But, I'm finally getting ALMOST there! I have noticed lots of things I've missed and will need to go back to and fill in (and I've missed MOST of the food talk), but still. This trip recap is at least getting there.
