DAY 1
Driving from Tampa to Miami was about 4 hours. On the way down, I took a northern route across the state to approach Miami from West Palm Beach. On the way, we checked out Mar-a-Lago on the Palm Beach barrier island. Mar-a-Lago is visible from a parking area on Bingham Island along Southern Blvd (highway 98), but no public tours are available. On the north side of Palm Beach is a shopping area and affluent beach homes. We arrived around 1PM and luckily the rain that day had just stopped. We parked near the historic Clock Tower (which used to be part of a public pier) and strolled over to the Church of Bethesda by the Sea.
We did NOT stop by the famous Haulover Beach, it was about another hour drive to the south.
The Church of Bethesda by the Sea (here) is an independent Evangelical church with its origin starting around 1889.
Below is a sample of some of the beach front homes along Palm Beach. This day was overcast and late December, but still warm enough many people were enjoying the beach and surfing in the modest waves.
From there we headed on towards Little Havana further south in Miami. We ate at Old Havana Cuban Bar and Cocina, next to the famous Domino Park. We got there about an hour before dark, so we got to see the free-range roosters. They were all over in the parking areas, each in their own little groups of chicks. But I was pre-occupied with finding parking to get a photo. We found a spot behind the Old Havana Cuban Bar but had to setup the “ParkWhiz” app to use the paybyphone.com service.
This part of Little Havana was very touristy. The food was ok just the noise and live music was altogether loud and we couldn’t hear each other talk across the table. Personally, I felt I enjoyed the Cuban restaurants near Ybor City (near Tampa) better. But it was getting late in the day and we were all tired from the long trek across the state. So, we checked-in to the hotel and made plans for the next day.
NOTE: The hotel had no public parking and required valet parking.
DAY 2
We had one “great weather day” so I forced everyone up early for a long day…
- Breakfast at Bayside Park (used ParkWhiz to reserve Bayside Marketplace Garage). We ate at La Industria Bakery, which was indeed expensive but located right within the heart of the Bayside Marketplace area (right next to the Observation Wheel). This would be the place to start on ocean tours, including six-hour tours down to Key West. The food was good but I may have preferred to have tried the Bubba Gump restaurant instead.
- Visit Vizcaya Museum and Garden. This started as a winter home for James Deering around 1916, whose family had invested in farmland in the west and farm harvesting equipment in the 1870s (Deering Harvester Company). This merged with International Harvesters in 1902. The family had long been interested in art (and toured Egypt in 1908). The house opened as a museum and garden in 1953.
The interior garden has a glass ceiling.
There are over 30 interior rooms across three floors and a basement, a true villa surrounded by mangroves and the Florida tropical forests.
Being right on the coast, Vizcaya has faced numerous atlantic storms over the years.
Connected to Vizcaya is an excellent garden with various fountains. Much of the material uses locally sourced coral, which numerous very large lizards easily climb around. At the very south end is an observation plaza, which had stone faces above the stairway access.
- Visit the Beach (Crandon Beach on Key Biscayne). We were still early for our dinner reservations, so I tried to visit the Florida Lighthouse at the end of Key Biscayne across Rickenbacker Causeway. But the traffic on the small road ended up being too congested, we settled on just exploring Crandon Park (which still required use of an app to pay for parking).
The beach was plenty long (wide) and clean, but had lots of seaweed accumulated right at the waters’ edge (and not a lot of choice for seashells). One interesting thing was there were a lot of coconuts (in trees and fallen on the ground) and many peacocks roaming the area.
- Dinner at Rusty Pelican (booked using OpenTable). While extremely expensive, we managed to get a table outside to enjoy the evening sunset against the Miami skyline. The food was actually very good and everyone enjoyed their orders (octopus, grouper, scallops, and various sushi).
- Visit South Beach (and The Betsy Orb). We parked two blocks from the Betsy Orb location. It was already dark, but we still checked out South Beach itself since weather report said the next day would be rain (which was it was) – it looked like a really great beach, and we had a full moon reflecting off the calm waves. I didn’t have the right lenses or filters to do it justice. We then walked along the many shops that were still open, getting some ice cream on the way back (at Icy-N-Spicy).
DAY 3
It was time to drive back and bad weather was coming in anyway. Still, we quickly visited a few last things:
- Superblue Miami (highlighting the artistic contribution of James Turrell who had a focus on the use of light itself as a form of interactive art)
The touch-walls were not as interactive as I had expected, but they would respond to touch to start “growing” flowers (themed off two alternating sequences of flowing lines and colorful flowers). The mirror maze reminded me of the Superman Fortress of Solitude for some reason. Since it was still raining and we couldn’t find any good parking, we just drove through the blocks near Wynwood Walls (about five square blocks dedicated to graffiti art).
While we did drive and wanted to see Coral Castle, it was getting late and the weather still wasn’t very well. So we pressed on towards “Vietnamese Fresh Farms” to bring back some fresh vegetables for friends back in Tampa and eating a late lunch at Pho Tastic (16772 SW 88th St, Miami, FL 33196, near Homestead, Florida).
