Saturday, February 2, 2008

Vacation Day 5: Back to Miami

It is a long overdue post on Miami trip=Þ

Miami and Miami Beach are two different cities in Florida. Miami Beach is tourist-centric, a large number of the people who live there tend to be working in the service industry. Miami Beach (particularly South Beach) is what normally seen on TV: celebrities, fancy restaurants, flashy cars. When people say they visited Miami, they actually meant they went to Miami Beach.


We stayed at the same hotel which we stayed on the first day located on Miami Beach. This is the view from room. Looking at the city, it is clean, green with trees and grass, blue and bright sunny sky. I love Miami Beach. Plan for the day was to visit the famous South Beach and Lincoln Road shopping area.


South Beach is one the the popular beaches in Miami Beach. "Miami Vice" was filmed in South Beach, back in the days whereby it was a poor area with high crime rate. Today it is one of the wealthiest areas on the beach. South Beach is know for its night life with hundreds of nightclubs and restaurant. Being a popular beach, it is always crowded. Due to limited time, we did a short stroll along the beach to experience the South Beach breeze and waves. =o)

These are four of us. After the beach, we went for lunch at a local Cuban Restaurant. The food was ok but my photos didnt turn out nice, hence decided not to post. Besides, the 4 of us didn't really enjoyed the meal. During lunch, Abishek mentioned about returning to NY the next day. I was shocked I thought we had 1 more day *sob*


A few blocks from the beach is the Lincoln Road Mall. It is a 12-block pedestarian mall, lined with almost 200 stores, indoor/outdoor restaurants, sidewalk cafes, bars and galleries. We spent the whole afternoon here. There were lots of nice fancy restaurants. Regretted having lunch back at the Cuban place.


We visited a lot of art galleries and below are my favorite. They were made of wires.


Miami Beach is also famous for its art deco architectures, which are building built during the pre-war period with rounded corner and geometric ornamentation. Below is the example of art deco architechture.
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After the shopping at Lincoln Road Mall, we went back to hotel, played cards, had some rest and went back to Lincoln Road Mall for dinner. We missed the lunch at Lincoln Road so we went there for dinner =)

We had Italian food. The dish on the left was Blackened Chicken which Abishek had and said was"fantastic!". The other one was chicken with cheese I think.


Jon had Fettucini with Porchini mushroom and yeah .. I had Oyster again! There was only 1 oyster menu which was the "Oyster Rockefellar". They were oyster with spinach and cheese. I knew I wouldn't like the spinach and cheese part but I was craving for oyster, hence I ordered it.


We had 2 bottles of complimentary wine. Both Abishek and Virteeka had 1 glass each and I shared the rest with Jon. Thankfully we had a designated driver.


Related posts: Day 1- Miami, Day 2- Marathon, Day 3- Key West, Day 4 - Dry Tortugas

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