A Colorful Tour of South Beach, Miami

Our family visited South Beach Miami as a pre stay before our charter flight to Cuba. We spent a couple of days taking in all the color of South Beach, based at the Blue Moon (a Marriott boutique hotel) located on Collins Ave, we were able to explore South Beach, South Point Park, Espanola Way and the Lincoln Road Pedestrian Mall. 

Our first stop on the evening we arrived was Joe's Stone Crab. I remember going there and gorging on crab legs during a business trip more than 20 years ago. Not much has changed since...the restaurant still offers excellent seafood in an elegant environment. Those platters of stone crabs aren't cheap, (I'm kind of sorry I couldn't put them on an expense account!) but they are delicious and the service is top notch! 

The raw bar at Joe's Stone Crab

As evening rolled around, not only was the sunset colorful, but South Beach in the evening got even more colorful! We started our walk at South Point Park on Biscayne Bay, and made our way up South Beach. 

The sky puts on its own colorful display at sunset on South Beach

Sunday night beach volleyball at courts by South Beach amped up with lights and music and a bar! 

Ocean Drive is the "main" drag in South Beach, a colorful place day or night! 

Ocean Ave is a scene for people with fancy cars to show off their "rides" by looping around Collins and Ocean Ave all night. 

Plenty of colorful neon decorates the Art Deco buildings in South Beach.

The next day, we had a swim on the beach before seeking advice from our concierge at Blur Moon about a good place to get pizza for lunch. He recommended Pizza Rustica, a little take out and delivery place on Washington Ave. 

Pizza Rustica is a just a store front with a broiling hot pizza oven and a counter top inside  or some umbrella tables outside, but the pizza is deliciouso!

It was hot in South Beach in mid June, but no place could be hotter than right here! 

These are called "huge squares" and cost $3.50- $5.75 for one depending on the toppings. In addition to being one of the best lunch values in town, this is truth in advertising! 

Another fun colorful stop for art fans or design geeks is the Wolfsonian (link).  There are also some really interesting and colorful historical propaganda posters collected from all over the world that appealed to the history buffs in our family! 

Our design geek loved the displays of Art Deco items. 

Here is an interesting and colorful metal Art Deco style vanity, which I happened to colorfully matched that day! 

Another area to visit is Espanola Way on Washington. This area has some pricey sidewalk cafes and more reasonably priced boutiques.  It's a nice quiet and shady area in the heart of the city.

Espanola Way has examples of Mediterranean architecture. 

Well...this shop isn't very colorful! 

Here's a shop that is very colorful, and the clerk was super friendly. 

A little further up from Espanola Way is the Lincoln Road Pedestrian Mall. In addition to all the usual chain mall stores, there are independent stores and lots of sidewalk cafe restaurants lining both sides of Lincoln Rd. 

Dylan's Candy Bar is a very colorful shop for kids and kids at heart! 

The man made shops and cafes are not the only colorful thing on Lincoln Road, this little gecko was showing off his colors trying to attract a mate on a tree right next to our table at Locanda Sabilla.

South Beach is very easy to navigate, with a grid of numbered streets intersecting all the main tourist thoroughfares; Ocean, Collins and Washington. It's easy to walk the whole area of you don't mind putting in a few miles. Traffic is almost always thick, and parking tight, so we found it easier to walk and could calculate how long our walk would be based on street the street address to our next stop. If it's just too hot to walk, (or your heels are too high) once there, there is a tourist bus that runs for a nominal fee and stops at all the major areas. After a day walking around hot and colorful South Beach, there is nothing better than slipping into a colorful, cool pool! 

The pool at Blue Moon on Collins Ave. 

For an interesting Colorless Tour of South Beach Miami, see our post here: 

http://www.goseeittravel.com/travel-blog/2015/7/29/art-deco-tour-south-beach-miami

A "Colorless" Tour of Colorful South Beach, Miami

Welcome to the colorful Art Deco area of Miami Beach! Wait? Where is all the color?! 

There is no doubt, a visit to Miami's South Beach is a colorful experience! There are the pastel Art Deco buildings (and contemporary reproductions), the mid 20th century American cars strategically parked in front of hotels and the neon signs, and "colorful" characters strolling along Ocean Drive, day and night. But during our recent visit to South Beach with our design student along, we wanted to focus of the architecture. Jeff discovered by cropping out the colorful characters and draining the pastels and neon out of the photos, we can really see the bones of the Art Deco (and Mediterranian Revival) architecture.  

The Miami Design Preservation League Art Deco Welcome Center

The group responsible for ensuring that Miami Beach keeps its iconic look, is the Miami Design Preservation League (MDPL).  A good first stop is their Art Deco Welcome Center http://www.mdpl.org/welcome-center/visitors-center/ on Ocean Ave. if you've taken a photo next to the famous clock and thermometer on Ocean Ave, you've been there already! In addition to a museum, there is a funky little gift shop featuring fun Miami and design gifts that go beyond the typical idea of "gift shop". Would you like a Robert Graves pitcher, an poster from a past "Art Deco Week" or maybe a old ukulele? You might find it here! Another thing you'll find there is the official Miami Beach Architectural Guide Map from the MDPL. It costs three dollars, but is well worth having for a self tour of the architecture of South Beach.  If you'd prefer, you can take a daily tour for $20 per person (no reservations needed) at 10:30 AM with a docent and get a little more "color" added the colorless descriptions in the architectural guide! 

A building stripped of its color draws your attention to the curved "eyebrows" over the windows. 

We learned that Miami's Art Deco is known as Streamline Moderne and is characterized by the stepped rooflines, symmetry, eyebrows over windows, glass blocks, curves and stream lines. These features "pop" more when the distractions of color and the people wandering around them are removed. 

The Art Deco buildings in Miami often have rounded features on the street front. 

The Victor Hotel has examples of streamlines running down the building and eyebrows over the windows. 

The Art Deco buildings often have a "nautical" look to them, evoking a steam ship, exemplified here by the rounded  "bow" of the building and the "porthole" windows.

The Tides hotel also has port hole details.

Several of these buildings also have colorful terrazzo tile floors in their lobbies. Touring independently, we were less than successful getting past the doormen to see most of them. It's likely the MDPL guide will have a better handle on which hotels welcome tourists trouping through and you'll have a better chance to see these on the organized tour.

What's hiding behind that wall of coleus.

This building above is open to everyone, Jeff hid them all behind some coleus, but people are just streaming in and out of this building! It's hugely popular! And you'll want to go if...um...you have to GO! It's the 14 th street bathhouse!

There are several buildings on the tour that fall under the category of "Contemporary", which means they are newer buildings (circa 1980s or 1990s) built to mimic the details of the buildings built during the Art Deco period in Miami. You'll also see plenty of Mediterranean Revival architecture, which is old world style with clock towers, balconies, archways, and the materials used are usually rough stucco and iron. 

A detail of glass block and eyebrows over the windows with streamlines on them. 

Use of neon sign on the Crescent Hotel circa 1938

For architecture or design nerds, Miami South Beach is a wonderful place beyond the fun beaches and bars and colorful characters!

Another place for design nerds to visit is the Florida International University Wolfsonian Museum. http://m.wolfsonian.org/info/ This interesting design museum includes the Art Deco design collection of the Mitchell Wolfson, and a great design gift shop. (Our own design geek, LOVED the gift shop, and we had to keep reminding her that we had weight limits for our luggage!)  The Wolfsonian is housed in the FIU building just a few blocks from Ocean Drive on the corner of 10th and Washington.  I have more photos from the Wolfsonian and other "colorful" parts of Miami in my posting- A Colorful Tour of South Beach, Miami 

Here:

http://www.goseeittravel.com/travel-blog/2015/7/29/a-colorful-tour-of-south-beach-miami

Cuba- Cars and Cigars! Part 2

A group of gentlemen from California enjoy cigars after a meal at a state run tourist restaurant

Nearly everyone I know who smokes asked me about bringing back Cuban cigars. Cuba is known for their excellent cigars. Is it just the allure of something we can't get in the USA? (because if there is one thing Americans are known for its for getting what we want as long as we can pay for it! )  Or are the cigars really that good? Our exchange wasn't centered around cigars but several of the men and a woman on our trip had interest in Cuban cigars, so our guides made sure they were able to explore their interests by recommending cigar bars and shops where they could buy them, during free time when there weren't exchange activities planned.

(For more about our trip see our previous post; http://www.goseeittravel.com/travel-blog/2015/7/1/cuba-we-can-all-agree-on-change.  )

We were told that all the Cuban cigars are made by the government factories, that these same factories produce all of the different "brands" of Cuban cigars. We were also told that the reason for the superiority of the cigars is due to the care taken to get the best leaves, with no stems or flavorless by products, and that they are all rolled by hand. Those folks who tried them did say the cigars were superior to what they can normally buy in the US, and several occasional smokers were feeling the effects of overindulging in them after a day of two. 

One thing I noticed as a non smoker, is that in the US, cigar smoke is intolerable to me, it will drive me right out of a venue.   But in Havana, even a room filled with smoke from Cuban cigars did not affect me the same way. Now, I know even less about cigars than cars (at least I actually USE a car in my every day life. (See our post about the cars of Cuba here; http://www.goseeittravel.com/travel-blog/2015/7/9/cuba-cars-and-cigars )  but I had the feeling that that better cigars somehow smelled better, and therefore were more tolerable to a person like myself who doesn't like them at all.  I had also fixed my attitude to expect cigar smoke because it is part of the culture here, and like a lot of things in Cuba I may not agree with- I was not visiting to express my disapproval, but rather learn about the place and its culture. 

A haze of cigar smoke fills the Jazz club in our hotel. Smokers enjoyed the opportunity to enjoy a cigar and hear good music. 

One of the things visiting cigar smokers enjoy about Havana is an open culture of cigar smoking. It's welcome in many restaurants, and public places.  Most places allow cigar smoking indoors and out. It's a common sight to see ash trays on restaurant tables and in the tables in the lobby of hotels. 

 We visited some famous jazz and dance clubs and recording studios used by Cuban musicians as part of our exchange. I was unfortunately just getting over a respiratory illness and had several attacks of reactive airways while in those closed in environments, even though no one was smoking during our visits.  The air quality in many places was poor and would be challenging for anyone with respiratory problems. I was fortunate to recover quickly from my issues by stepping outside and using an inhaler.

Many state owned restaurants and Jazz Clubs catering to tourists do not allow indoor smoking at all. So it's possible for tourists to seek those out, but possibly at the expense of visiting with locals.

The Jazz club right across from the Melia Cohiba hotel in Vedado was airy, air conditioned and non smoking. Even though the band was local, we had met them earlier in the week as part of our exchange, the club was also filled entirely with South American and European tourists. 

Interestingly, we rarely saw people smoking cigarettes in Cuba. We were told that filtered cigarettes are expensive and most Cubans can get inexpensive cigars (or roll their own) that are made with the twigs and other by products of the tobacco left over from government manufactured cigars. We were also told not to buy cigars on the street from Cubans because these are most likely the home rolled versions of poor quality because ordinary Cubans do not have access to the best tobacco.

There are several state run tobacco shops, and there was a shop in our hotel run by the state where all the brands were available for purchase.  At the time we traveled Americans returning the U.S. were allowed to bring back $100 worth of cigars. (Any Cuban rum brought home was also included in this $100 allowance) However, our guides explained that those guidelines can change quickly and capriciously, as the tango of opening US and Cuba relations goes on, so if you go, ask someone in the know before you invest in cigars to bring home. 

Gentlemen in Havana enjoy a cigar while reading the two government produced newspapers.