Tropical Heat With A Samba Beat
Weary from the hectic day before, we took it easy this morning and made the most of our amazing hotel. Ross and Sam had worked up a sweat in the gym, while Toby and Maisy had a leisurely swim in the gorgeous pool, backing onto picturesque Biscayne Bay. Molly and I caught up a bit more (much needed) sleep. By now we had a pretty sizeable bag of dirty clothes – our kids obviously not accustomed to doing their own washing and therefore wearing something for a couple of hours before tossing it in the dirty clothes pile. Thankfully I’m not washing towels too!
We drove up the road to the Marriot, where we could do the laundry and found ourselves in a predominantly Latino neighbourhood. Everything was written in Spanish and most people were speaking with thick Spanish accents. There were lots of Cuban restaurants and buskers playing salsa music. We had some breakfast (which was really lunch by now!) in a cute little café while we waited for the clothes to dry.
Sam had a go behind the wheel today and actually did a really great job. Ross wanted him to drive while we were here and thought it was a good opportunity to practice around the local streets of Miami. It was a labyrinth of one way streets and on and off ramps. It’s actually hard to drive in Miami without encountering the 10 lane highway but after a bit of trial and error, we finally found the beach and we were all proud of Sam!
It must have been close to 40 degrees today and it is just SO humid in Miami! We were keen for a refreshing dip. There were hotels galore, fronting the beach right along the coast, each with their own private sections of sand, drink huts, and private entries with their own showers and toilets. There were public paths through to the beach in between the hotels and a pathway right along the front of all the hotels where plenty of people were enjoying cycling and walking. We did briefly toy with the idea of hiring bikes but it was just TOO hot! As our toes touched the coarse sand, speckled with dark grains, we were amazed to see the hundreds of beach umbrellas and banana chairs littering the beach! They were colour coded to match their hotels and we were right outside the Ritz Carlton. Fantastic! We found some unoccupied comfy banana chairs, complete with squishy cushions, with a nice big shady umbrella and were quietly pleased with ourselves, settling ourselves in for the day. But… just as we were lathering the last square inches of suncream on our still glowing bodies, a Ritz Carlton waiter (“server” as they call them here) came bolting towards us with an alarmed look on his face. Asking us if we were staying at the Ritz (at $900 a night, I don’t think so!) he told us the chairs cost $25 each to hire and the umbrella was a further $25 and by our quick calculations that was a cool $125 for a quick lounge on the beach. How disappointing! We had now committed our second crime in 2 days.
Instead, we took our own hotel beach towels and found our own little patch of sand, devoid of any shade, and took our first momentous dive into the wide blue Atlantic! The water was really warm and not as refreshing as we’d hoped. It was quite murky with heaps of small seaweed fragments all through the water that looked a bit like a tree had been dropping leaves. The stretch of sand we were on went for miles in both directions and this one beach covers the entire coast of Miami. Given the weather, it wasn’t overcrowded but there were people of all ages and stages out enjoying the day. The sky was filled with parasailers and there were jet skis zooming out behind the tiny waves. A young guy with a big plastic bag filled with ice and bottles of water sold us some cold water and Toby was paranoid it might be spiked! Ross said “if I start hallucinating Tobes, you’ll have to drive home”. Admittedly, in Toby’s defence, the guy’s plastic bag did have a slogan on the side saying “I love Vodka” and as he grinned at us with a few less teeth than his full quota he did seem a little intoxicated.
We had a good drive around Miami, checking out the sights and sounds of this famous city. We had all had preconceived ideas of what Miami would be like – for me it was over-tanned, middle-aged women toting Chihuahuas with bows in their hair and dated art deco motels on the beach. Ross was expecting Don Johnson to yell “Stop! Vice!” when he rounded every corner and Toby had visions of Miami from video games he’s played. Molly imagined scenes from “Step Up 4” and hip-hop dancing on the streets and Sam’s perception of Miami was from movies too, including “Too Fast, Too Furious” (which we hope doesn’t influence his driving while we’re here). In a way, we were all right, with Miami a hotch potch of all these scenes. There’s definitely a ‘live fast’ mentality here with an abundance of sports cars and well-dressed locals. Along South Beach there are volleyball courts amongst all the tropical palm trees and rows and rows of nightclubs and restaurants with a young party atmosphere. There are a lot of art deco buildings around, many of them seemingly not touched since their hey day and a bit dilapidated and then in contrast, there are islands – over bridges, not unlike the Gold Coast – with huge, opulent houses, boasting their own jetties and humungous cruisers docked right at the back door. Toby really loved Miami and was thinking out loud about how much greater it would be if only it had surf, a few less people and theme parks. Molly reminded him there was such a place in existence: The Gold Coast! “Oh yeah!”
We opted to head back to the hotel pool for a dip and a drink and Maisy made a new friend, Alexa, from Daytona Beach. Alexa roped us all into playing “Sharks and Minnows” for the next half hour and none of us had the heart to stop playing because she was having so much fun. In the end Molly and I made a polite excuse to leave the pool and she told everyone in the pool area we were “quitters!”
I had bought tickets for the Katy Perry concert before we left home so we were all pretty excited to be heading to the hugely impressive American Airlines Arena for the show. Our hotel was only a few blocks away so we were able to walk down. Even at 7pm it was still 31 degrees and so balmy! The Miami skyline is beautiful and the Bayside area we were walking through had parklands right on the Bay, with markets and restaurants and even a merry-go-round. The throng of people walking with us were all walking with purpose, getting in the mood for the concert and there was a guy busking, wearing a purple wig and playing Katy Perry songs on the trumpet (albeit poorly), which got the crowd excited. Outside the arena – the home court for the Miami Heat basketball team – there were tents from all the different radio stations blaring Katy Perry hits and holding competitions. The atmosphere was amazing!
Our tickets had the start time of 7pm on them so we had rushed to get there on time, running out of time for dinner…again! We seem to be missing meals all over the place on this trip. To tide us over we got a “bottomless” tub of popcorn, which we refilled. (It took Tobes a while to work out how they kept the popcorn in the tub without it falling out.)
*This is a spoiler alert in case you’re going when she comes to Sydney…skip over the next paragraph.
To say the concert didn’t disappoint is an understatement! Katy Perry was AWESOME! She started with “Roar” and her energy level didn’t wane for the next 2 and a half hours! She was dancing and singing up a storm. She had acrobats hanging off big metal structures, where she was suspended horizontal and whooshed around the arena, not missing a note. Her guitarists were flying, suspended high in the air, with neon lights on their guitars and sparks shooting from their ends (the guitars’ that is, not the guitarists’) She swung out on a balloon-topped giant swing, way up above the crowd, popped in and out of holes in the stage and had about 15 costume changes! The light show was the most amazing any of us had ever seen and we were given bright pink cardboard “Prism Vision” glasses that when worn, turned every light into a rainbow with special effects coming at you. Amazingly they didn’t obstruct or blur your vision of anything else. The concert was punctuated by Maisy yelling “WHOAH!” every time she peered through her special specs! She had a ball, despite falling asleep sitting up, near the end (it was nearly 11pm after all!) At the end of the concert, thousands of balloons and glitter fell on the audience and fireworks went off! It was such an experience!
Exiting the arena around 11:30pm we were all suitably starving. We had hoped Bubba Gump’s – right next door – might still be open but alas it was not. Ross enquired about where we might be able to go for dinner and the bloke he asked said “Hooters” was the only place that was open. Ross said “for a family?” and he just shrugged his shoulders and said everything else was closed. Yikes! There was nothing else! We were starving! We ascended the escalator tentatively, ready to join the queue. None of us were comfortable about it but Toby and Ross felt particularly uncomfortable about the whole thing, Toby asking: “is mum OK with this?” and Ross replying that it was “mum’s idea”. Toby then said “well, that’s just weird!”
I’d just like to say that under normal circumstances, I would NEVER consider bundling the kids up and taking them for a wholesome meal at Hooters but these were desperate times! Thankfully (divine intervention) the queue was out of control and there was a solid wait so we walked back to the hotel and hoped there may be something available there. Fortunately we were able to get dinner from the bar menu in the hotel. I know it doesn’t sound good taking the kids to a bar, in downtown Miami at midnight, on a week night to boot, but it was slightly better than Hooters! We went to bed with nice full bellies and Katy Perry songs playing along in our heads.
