So much to do in Miami! Unfortunately, we were there over a holiday and over one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year. So we spent our time in Miami relaxing, regrouping, and planning our travel for next year.
We did visit one of the most recommended entertainment venues, Bayside Marketplace. We traveled there free via the MetroMover, which is shown near the end of today’s photos. It looks like a subway, but there are no drivers and there is no charge. When its operation first started in 1987, the fee was 25 cents per ride, but the cost of collecting the fee was larger than the income from the rides. So, now it is free for everyone, carrying tens of thousands of people per month. What a bonus when visiting Miami!
Most of the photos were taken around the marketplace, starting with Carmen Miranda. It was pretty crowded in the middle of the afternoon! In the photo after the Nutcracker, you can see a band playing some lively Cuba music. You can hear a snippet in the video at the end of the photos. The best part was that everyone was dancing…young, old, men, women, solo, in twos and threes, people who seem to be pretty good Latin dancers and those who shuffled their feet around but wanted to be a part of the scene. It was infectious, and yes, even we joined in for a while, since the level of skill didn’t matter at all. Just to be in the dance was enough.
We liked the decorated banyan tree, and these trees live up to 1,000 years, so they only need to decorate once a millennium! Psycho Bunny is a great name for a retail clothing store. The sandy colored building is Miami’s iconic Freedom Tower, completed in 1925 and later used during Castro’s regime to assist Cubans fleeing to Florida. The Pharma Box was especially interesting to us since we had so much trouble in the rest of the world obtaining just about everything this box offered for sale. Paradoxically, we found a vending machine for contact lenses several months ago, but you can’t buy advil or calcium supplements without visiting a pharmacy!
Finally…2 lb packages of Kit Kat Bars, anyone? This store sold all sorts of giant 1-3 lb candy bars. It must be owned by dentists!
