Day 1: South Beach, Miami

I arrived late yesterday, Valentine’s Day, and after flawless air travel Erica picked me up at the Ft Lauderdale airport. We are staying in Airbnb’s for all of the 2 weeks and have a variety of hosts and houses and facilities. It will be a fascinating experience, especially for me… being much more of Westin girl than I care to admit! I’ve included a picture of our first place — great location, big bedroom, but the house overall is in need of a handyman. Since the intent is to be out an about during the day anyway, doesn’t much matter. Our host is a young woman named Jessica and other than a chance to get the key we’ve seen none of her.

Today was beautiful but windy and chilly. We walked all through the Art Deco district, and to the Art Deco welcome center, which is operated by the MIami Design Preservation League. The organization came into being in the late 70’s and is/was dedicated to preserving the unique and beautiful architecture of the southern part of Miami Beach. It was quite informative and inspiring to learn how two people with a vision and passion were able to stem the tide of demolition and change the view of an entire district. The Center also included objects from the era of the 20’s-40’s so it wasn’t surprising to see TinkerToys, Lincoln Logs and Monopoly all referenced and described.

It’s a great walking city, so we put some miles on our sneakers, and spent a bit of time just sitting on the beach people watching and listening to the waves. The water is the most beautiful shade of light blue and turquoise, and while warmer than the Pacific still a bit chilly for a swim today. Hopefully as we get further south and the air warms up we can enjoy it.

The Lincoln Road pedestrian mall is like a cross between The Grove and the worst parts of the Champs D’Elysee — tons of shops and restaurants and fountains and hostesses encouraging you to eat the fine international cuisine. We opted for Shake Shack, which I’d been dying to try since Danny Meyer hasn’t made it out to the west coast yet. Pretty good burger and great krinkle fries! We then scoped out the Frank Gehry designed World Center which is a newish symphony hall in SoBe. It has some of his common design themes inside, but the outside was pretty much a glass box. Not holding a candle to Walt Disney Hall.