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Miami

Sandy and I took a trip to the Turks and Caicos islands this June. The easiest way for us to get there is to go through Miami, even though that requires an overnight stopover. Since my son Tim is living in Miami, we decided to stay for the weekend so we could visit with him.

On my recent trips to Bonaire in December and Baltimore in February, I had terrible luck with flights being late or even cancelled. That left me a little nervous but fortunately there were no problems this time and all of our flights were on time or early.

We arrived in Miami about 3:30 in the afternoon. After we got our bags, Tim picked us up and took us to our hotel. We were staying at a place only a few blocks from where Tim lives. It's in Brickell, an upscale neighborhood just south of downtown Miami. Tim was sharing an apartment with another guy, a really nice place right on the ocean. I booked a room for us at the Novotel in Brickell several months in advance to get a reasonable rate - hotels there are very expensive. Everything was all set.

Unfortunately things had changed since I made the arrangements. Tim has to do a four month assignment overseas for work later this year so he didn't renew his share of his apartment. Instead he was living with his girlfriend temporarily until he left on his trip. She lives in Ft. Lauderdale, about an hours drive from where we were staying. I had paid in advance to get the best possible rate so I couldn't cancel out. Oh well. That's what I get for being so diligent and making all of our trip preparations well in advance.

After checking in at the hotel and dropping our luggage in our room, we walked to downtown Brickell. There are a lot of restaurants there so we figured it would be easy to find a place to eat dinner. After walking a couple of blocks we stopped at a restaurant called North Italia which looked promisingd. I'll always go for Italian food. There weren't many customers and there were plenty of servers so we were surprised when a long time passed without anyone coming to wait on us. Tim worked as a waiter during high school. Because of that experience, he tips well when there is good service but is harsh when there isn't. After waiting over half an hour he said we should leave. On our way out he provided some "constructive feedback" to the hostess.

We only had to walk a block before we found Bellillo, another Italian restaurant. It's actually a chain but this was their only location in the US. Their other restaurants are in London, Barcelona and Naples. (Actually, to be more precise, that last location is Napoli. Naples is in Florida.) Not your typical franchise pizza place.

We got a table on their small patio in front of the building next to the sidewalk. It was a beautiful evening to be out and our food was good. It was also a great spot to people watch. The funniest thing that happened was when a delivery truck stoped near the corner of a busy intersection in a no parking zone. A police car pulled up behind him, obviously not happy about where he had stopped. Apparently the guy wasn't paying attention because he started to leave. Since he had pulled up as close to the car in front of him as possible to avoid blocking the crosswalk, he had to back up - right into the police car, flashing lights and all. No one was hurt and it didn't look like there was any significant damage so we had a good laugh over it.

After dinner we went back to the hotel and had a drink at the rooftop bar. We had a nice view of Brickell as it went from early evening to sunset to night. It reminded me of Singapore with all the new high rise buildings and the hot, humid weather.

Next morning Sandy and I were up early so we could take a walk. We did a loop down to the ocean that went right by Tim's old apartment building. On the way back we went to a market right across from our hotel to pick up a few snack items for the day. It's too bad that Tim had moved. My hotel choice would have been perfect otherwise. It would have been really convenient if Tim still lived in his old place.

Our plan for the day was to drive down to the Keys. Tim picked us up and we headed south on Highway 1. In South Miami we made a stop for donuts at The Salty, a specialty pastry shop. And coffee too, at least for Sandy and Tim. Or in my case, Diet Coke, since I don't drink coffee. Tim took me to a fancy donut shop on my last trip to Baltimore last year too. He always seems to know where the best donut shops are. I guess with all the workouts he does, he needs to consume a lot of calories.

Back on the road we drove through a thunderstorm. The rain was pretty intense for a while but then we came out on the other side and the weather improved. After that it was pretty nice for the rest of the day.

When we reached Key Largo we went to Harry Harris Park and Beach. There was an entrance fee but Tim got us in for free with his military ID. The beach there wasn't anything special. In fact, it was artificial - there aren't too many beaches in the Florida Keys. The coolest thing about the park was a large shallow area sheltered behind a long rock barrier. It was essentially a giant tide pool. As we walked along we could see lots of small jellyfish swimming in the pool. Even with all the scuba diving I've done I haven't seen many jellyfish up close like this. It was pretty unique.

Just as we were about to leave Mickey called. He was having a bad weekend, with major car problems as well as house problems. He was looking for advice so we all sat down at a picnic bench and I turned it into a conference call. Sandy and Tim knew more about that stuff than I did so they were able to give him some suggestions.

Next up was the History of Diving Museum on Islamorada. There were a lot of interesting displays, quite a few of them about hard-hat diving. As much as I like to dive, none of that old equipment looked very tempting. There were also some deep submersible suits for depths over a thousand feet. They looked more like armored battlesuits out of Starship Troopers than diving gear. Quite initimidating. Overall the museum was very interesting and well worth a visit.

After touring the museum we started back north. We had an excellent late lunch at Wahoo's Seafood Bar and Grill, sitting on their patio looking out over the water. I even got a cool tshirt there. We followed it with dessert at the Blonde Giraffe Key Lime Pie Factory. We had key lime pie, of course, which was excellent. That was to be expected as we were in the Florida Keys after all. I also got a large container of key lime flavored meringue to take along to Turks and Caicos. It lasted me for the rest of the trip.

Tim had one more surprise on the way back, a stop at a winery in Homestead. Sandy and I like to visit wineries when we travel but I did not expect to find one in South Florida. They made fruit wines, which isn't surprising considering where they are located. I'm usually not a big fan of fruit wines - I prefer wines that are dry rather than sweet. But when I tasted their dryest wine I thought that it was quite good. Sandy and I each bought a glass. I would have bought a bottle to take with us but we were leaving the country the day after next. I wasn't sure what the rules were for taking wine into Turks and Caicos.

But the winery visit was great. I mean you have to love a place named Schnebly Winery.

We got back to Miami about five. Tim dropped Sandy and I at our hotel. It had been a fun day but now us old folks were content to relax and watch the Brewer game that evening. Tim had more energy and went back to Ft. Lauderdale to meet up with his girl friend for dinner.

On our last day in Miami, Tim met us for Sunday brunch. We walked a few blocks to CRAFT, a restaurant with a large patio. It was a beautiful morning and we had a good meal, complete with mamosas, while we figured out our plan for the afternoon. Tim proposed a tour of Wynwood, a neighborhood in Miami famous as an art district. When I had visited last December on the way to Bonaire Tim had made the same proposal but it had been vetoed by his brother Mickey. Since Tim had brought it up again I figured that we should probably go and check it out.

Driving there, we passed through a pretty rough neighborhood, but when we crossed under I395 it started to improve. A few blocks more and we reached the edge of Wynwood, a yuppie, artistic district. If you liked it you would say that it had been rebuilt and improved. If you didn't approve you would say it had been gentrified. I'm not an art fan or a yuppie but I certainly thought it was an improvement over the area to the south. There were a lot of trendy new businesses - art galleries, restaurants and bars. There were also several new, multi-storey luxury condominiums. And there were crowds of people on the streets.

What the neighborhood is famous for are the Wynwood Walls. It started as graffiti on the walls of the buildings in the neighborhood. Over time it evolved and became more professional. Now virtually every building, wall and fence is covered with impressive art. Even many of the vehicles were covered with colorful artwork. My favorite was a truck for "Scooter Steve's", a business I might have ended up running in an alternate universe.

There were definitely some eclectic businesses. Our first stop was at WallGrace Vintage Guitars and Cars, a shop that sold rare, vintage guitars and cars. Definitely an unusual combination. I personally can't ever remember a day that I went out to buy a new car and a guitar. And the cars were impressive - Porsches and Ferraris. I have to admit that I found my dream car there, but I managed to resist the urge to make an impulse buy. It would have been hard to get home in my luggage anyway.

Next we went through the Wynwood Walls museum. It had a large collection of wall art, displays which told the history of the neighborhood and its artwork. and galleries which sold smaller art pieces. The galleries had lots of paintings and sculptures that you could get for fifty thousand dollars or so, but somehow I wasn't tempted to buy anything.

Finally we visited Lock and Load Miami, an indoor shooting range that touted that you could fire a machine gun. We didn't do that, but we did tour their extensive museum of mililtary fire arms. Well, Tim and I did. Sandy just found a seat and enjoyed being out of the hot sun for a while. I'm not that interested in guns but I did find it very interesting. It did help that Tim was along to answer my questions since he is pretty expert on the subject. We spent quite a bit of time there.

Besides our stops we spent a lot of time just walking around admiring the buildings. It was interesting but it was a very hot, sunny, humid day and eventually we were tired and starting to overheat. We couldn't make it all the way back to where we were parked without a break so we stopped at Dr Smoog's for some health drink smoothies. Not what I usually would have but we needed some cold drinks. Then it was back to Tim's truck to drive back to our hotel.

Sandy was pretty wiped out by the heat so she settled into our room for the evening. I cleaned up quickly and went with Tim to drive up to Ft. Lauderdale. We joined up with his girlfriend Yanet (pronounced janet). It was the first time that I had met her and she seemed very nice. We went downtown to Louie Bossi's Ristorante (yes, an Italian place - what did you expect?). It was crowded but we managed to get in. We had a great meal and some good wine. After dinner I caught an Uber back to Brickell.

It had been a really good weekend hanging out with Tim. The next morning we off to the airport to catch our flight to Turks and Caicos for the next part of our trip.