Beaches & Booty
For the 4th of July just passed, Laura and I headed to South Beach, Miami for a few days of hard-core rest & relaxation. Which means no plans of any kind, not even dinner reservations. This trip was the follow up to a one-day excursion two years ago returning from a customer visit in Fort Lauderdale. Aside from some really good ceviche and pounding beers while watching hot chicks at Mango’s, we can’t remember much of that day, other than it ended some time around 3 am. Recognizing the potential for a very good time, we’ve been chomping at the bit for a chance to get back to Miami.
South Beach is the Miami equivalent of the Strip in Las Vegas or Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Ocean Avenue runs along much of South Beach, and is home to art-deco hotels, bars and restaurants that stretch for over 20 blocks along the beach. The place doesn’t come alive until afternoon, but then continues at full tilt until well after midnight. We know first hand that this part of town is still rockin’ at 2 am with some of the greatest examples of human diversity that you can find in this country!
The routine we like to follow is to sleep until about noon, which is only 9 am back home in California, suck down some coffee and lots of water, and start moving towards the door. We wander down Ocean Avenue looking for food and enjoying the warm tropical weather, which surrounds you like a hug. This isn’t Kansas anymore so expect to be immersed in every color and language of humanity imaginable.
After some fine Caribbean seafood and a few drinks, we cut over to the water and begin traipsing our way back the 15 blocks to the National Hotel, our home away from home on this trip. The walk along this part of South Beach is an experience to be remembered! Over this stretch of ocean are arrayed a collection of ad-hoc beaches with implicit themes so varied as to put Disney to shame. There’s the family beach, the romantic beach, the volleyball beach, the chicks with no tops beach, the gay beach, the black beach, the Puerto Rican beach, the hoitey-toitey “hotel guests only” beach, the old people beach and more, with people of all shapes, ages, sizes, and various states of undress crammed onto the hot sand or splashing in the 80-degree water. One word: Amazing!
Finally, with our calves burning from walking miles in the sand and our senses suitably shocked for one day, we’re back at the hotel pool, fortified with a mai-tai and a good book. So begins our “quiet time”, before we gear up for dinner and begin the evening tour of South Beach offerings. Much like Europe, a 9 pm dinner reservation is still at risk of being a bit early and lots of restaurants are still seating at 11:30 pm.
There’s a wide range of food, most of it traditional European or American, with Caribbean influence and lots of seafood. While the best restaurants in this area are not on Ocean Avenue, we’ve had some very passable food at A Fish Called Avalon, Pelican Miami, and Oriente at Gloria Estefan’s Cordozo Hotel. You can check out www.itsdiningtime.com for my reviews of these establishments. However, all of these restaurants pale in comparison to the very awesome food we enjoyed at Ola, located in the Sanctuary Hotel a few blocks off of Ocean Avenue. And don’t forget that Robert DeNiro’s restaurant Nobu (sushi) is at the Shore Club just a few blocks away.
The bars and clubs go on and on, seemingly without end. Jazz clubs abound. In fact, the last time we were here we found a great little Jazz bar that fills up with friendly locals situated right next to a tattoo parlor that fills up with nervous Midwestern tourists. It turns out the tattoo parlor is where Miami Ink is filmed! Still, we had more fun listening to Jazz and sipping Mohitos. And of course, no experience of the South Beach night life is complete without a beer at Mango’s, right on Ocean Avenue, and filled with the young ladies dancing on the bar. Mango’s is a Caribbean version of “Coyote Ugly”, only wilder!
We’ve never survived our evening adventures late enough to know when Miami actually starts to quiet down, but we’re happy that “what happens in Miami stays in Miami!”
– Chris