Miami

Since Biscayne National Park is just south of Miami we could stay at the same campground for both Biscayne and Miami. It is a state park campground in an avocado plantation – I’ve never seen an avocado tree before and when we drove in we were not sure what kind of green “fruits” there were on the trees! Anyway, the campground is just 15 miles south of Miami and very nice – my only complaints, besides some mosquitoes, would be that the water in the showers was too hot and could not be adjusted, and that the avocados were not ripe. Life is tough!


We had decided to see two parts of Miami the first day, little Havana and South Beach (contrast program!). We parked the bus at the train station and took the train into town, and walked the 20-25 minutes it took down to Little Havana. This part of town was once inhabited by exile Cubans only, but today it is a bit more mixed, with people from everywhere in Latin America, but it still is the Cuban cultural center in Miami. How do you best experience Cuba, if you’re about 150 miles away and only want to spend a few hours – as usual our choice was food  . We got some very tasty beef stew with black beans and rise and plantains for lunch. Afterwards we got “Café con Leche”, which was served the original way, a cup of steamed milk with the espresso in an extra cup, so you could mix it yourself. As if this was not enough we stopped at a fruit/flower shop and juice bar, to get some Coco Frío (cold coconut) – they opened the green coconut with a machete and poked a straw into it for drinking. Very tasty ..and a lot of entertainment value for Felix!

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Afterwards we took the bus to Palm Beach .. let us just say that public transport is possible, but not easy, on a Saturday. We arrived on Palm Beach a bit before sunset, and we managed to get a really tasty italian gelato (the most expensive ever) before we went to the beach (no swimming this time, but the water is gorgeous) around sunset.

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Felix got to play American Football with some of the people on the beach before we walked down Ocean Drive – “The Food Row” – where all the restaurants are doing their level best (short of tripping you!) to get you into their restaurant. Most of the houses are art deco style. Some original and some new, but very pretty .. especially with the lights on.

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We really wanted to find some “Floribbean”, or Caribbean fusion, food (described as Caribbian food made with local Florida ingrediences using European cooking techniques), but it was not that obvious. We ended up in one of the larger restaurants which served a varity of things. Sabine got Yellowtail, I got Florida Grouper and Felix got mussels – all with some Caribbean influence.

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Getting back to the campground was somewhat of an experience – we left kind of late, got the last bus to the train station (after a longer than expected wait). Because of a concert in town the bus missed the last train. Since Miami has a Night Owl service all night you are never stuck, but you need patience. We got a Night Owl out to the train station that night and were at the campground around two. Felix was still awake, but sooooo tired.

The next day we first wanted to go to the Venetian Pool (build to look like a Venetian Lagoon, with waterfalls, bridges, etc, from 1920), but when we came there we found it closed. They closed two weeks earlier for a six month restoration. Since Felix still was a bit tiered from the day before, we wanted to go back to South Beach, maybe to go to the water, but first he needed to sleep. We put him in the baby jogger to fall asleep – he usually does that well – but not today. After a few hours walking around we sat down for a beer instead. Dinner was Cuban food in a small restaurant (not looking very fancy) where the menu was larger than a Sunday newspaper, but the specials were very good (next to us was a group of Danes all eating cheese burgers – it is a mystery to me why anyone would go to an obviously Cuban place to eat cheese burgers. If they tell at home that the food there was nothing special, then it is really their own fault).

As you see we spend most of our time in Miami eating. Wonder when we have to start opening both doors in the bus to get in!

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