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| Off to the Beach |
Woke up, had breakfast at the hotel and drove to Miami. We went right through downtown to South Beach. The streets were torn up here and there, but we got over to an area near where we wanted to go and parked. Walked through Lincoln Avenue mall,
an open air mall area straight down to the beach. The mall was pretty much upscale chains. There were many, many, many foreign people. There was a line half way down the block at the Apple store. Huge hotels at the beach. We walked along a very nice walkway above the beach. The beaches had umbrella valets and areas connected to the hotels. They were wide and sandy. There were guards at the hotel gates and some of the hotels had huge pool areas with Advertised parties. It was very Las Vegas.
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| Baby Deco Plane |
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| Deco Hotel |
Our main idea was to go through the art deco district, which we did. Most of the places were on Ocean Avenue or a few blocks nearby. We went into a little art deco/ Miami architecture museum and looked around. We got a little map for a self guided tour. The Art Deco hotels have mostly been restored and have restaurants with sidewalk tables on the ground floor. They were very crowded. We went into the lobby of two of them and looked around. One of them had a very nice bellman who was happy to talk about the hotel history. We also walked around a block or two away from Ocean, which was not nearly as crowded and also had lovely buildings. We got an espresso and walked back up the mall area and then made our way out of downtown.
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| In front of Party Barge |
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| Vizcaya Grounds |
Laura emailed us a suggested route to leave Miami that took us through Coconut Grove and Coral Gables. Mostly down Old Cutler Road. It was very pretty however it was also rush hour and very crowded. We stopped at the Vizcaya mansion and gardens and had a lovely time walking around there. The gardens were beautiful and the site of the property was amazing...right on the Bay of Biscayne. There was a very strange cement barge built right in front about fifty feet across the water. We walked through the gardens and orchid area. There was a strange sign in the women's bathroom urging victims of human trafficking and domestic violence to call for help. I thought it odd to have it there as opposed to the bathrooms on the boardwalk at South Beach where there was actual prostitution occurring. We used those bathrooms also. (all the public bathrooms were amazingly clean)
It was quite a trafficky slow stressful drive back to Key Largo. W did a lot of navigation via my cell phone. We ate at Buzzards which was just off the Atlantic side of the highway as you got into Key Largo. It was on the edge of a marina and it was very atmospheric. We had conch fritters and I had a mojito. We drove by the next day in the daylight just to see it.
