Well we’re back, several days now, from sunny, party cloudy, rainy, but warm South Miami Beach (SoBe), awaiting the second major snow storm of the season. They are predicting up to 14 inches in Philadelphia.
We had a nice time away. Our room at the Sagamore Hotel was pretty good – a suite with a kitchen area that included a refrigerator, microwave and a toaster. No flatware or plates, so we picked up some paper and plastic at the drugstore. We shopped at a little gourmet market we found when we were here three years ago with Curlew. We had our breakfast in our room, and also wine and cheese. The room had a king-sized bed, so it was sometimes hard to find Thierry under the sheets.
The hotel boasted that it was an “art hotel”, and they did have quite a number of interesting photo arrangements, sculptures, paintings, and video images throughout. They also had murals painted in the stairway. As the hotel only had 5 floors, it was easy to take the stairway and enjoy the artwork.
We managed to spend one afternoon at the beach – and learned that the chairs and umbrella (which was necessary as my skins is sensitive to sun due to the chemo) each cost $10 (umbrellas $15) to rent (ugh!). We spent the second day (afternoon) at the pool. We went to North Miami Beach for an arts and crafts show on the third day – which was not very impressive, but we had a good lunch at a Thai restaurant.
We saw a performance by the New World Symphony of Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3, which included a discussion of the way performances of this piece have changed over the centuries.
Each day we also walked quite a bit, visiting various sections of South Beach, and tried several restaurants on Lincoln Road for dinner at night. One of the more memorable was a Sushi restaurant (“Sushi-Samba”), where there was a lot of action and a great place to people watch – the sushi was good. The other was a place called Spris, where we had salads and a pizza. The pizza was good, the salad was great and the waiter was a lot of fun.
Our last day started out rainy. By the time the rain stopped it was lunch time. We decided to try a little place about a block and a half from our hotel. We were sitting outside under an awning and had just about finished our lunch when it started to rain again. After a few minutes the rain turned into a deluge – it just poured, and poured. We sat there for about two hours observing traffic and those that were brave enough to walk. The streets quickly became flooded.
When the rain seemed to calm a bit, we made a break for it. Unfortunately, the cross streets were so backed up with water, we had to wade through it with the water coming up to mid-calf. Thierry thought it was lots of fun. I was near tears as I was wearing one of the two pairs of decent walking shoes that I own (suede Merrils). When we got back to the hotel, Thierry stuffed them full of newspaper to help them dry out. I kept telling myself I needed to find humor in this (as my sister Jean would say), but the best I could come up with was that I was sure I would laugh about this in a day or two (it only took me until dinner time).
On our last night, we had dinner at a restaurant called Sardinia, which is away from the main drag and is actually very close to where we anchored several years ago. The food here is really good and not too expensive, and of all the places we have eaten in SoBe, they have the best bread. Most of the restaurants in So Be are expensive for really mediocre food. If you want to go to a good restaurant expect to pay $30-50 for an entrée. You can usually find a reasonably priced glass of wine, but the cocktails are in the $12.00 range and up.
I think if we go again we’ll look into renting a place for a month. We would probably spend the same as what we paid for 5 nights. But I like the area, there are things to do, good beaches and much to observe. It was a good getaway.
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