This was the title of a post I saw on gadling.com about a week ago or so. They have a series of articles called Galley Gossip, written by a flight attendant and this was what her post was called when it came through my RSS reader. When I went to gadling this afternoon to copy the URL to use here, I saw it's name had been changed to "There's more to Miami than La Carreta" so I guess someone took offense to the title of the original post.

The theme of the post is that for her, going to Miami means getting off the plane, going through immigration and customs (if it's an int'l light) and then going to La Caretta and getting back on a plane and going somewhere else. It really struck a chord with me because my take on Miami is similar: airport, cargo, airport commercial park, a few of the hotels in the vicinity of the airport and the Circuit City on Galloway. My Miami is not South Beach, Key Biscayne, or anywhere sunny, bikini-clad and prone to be featured as a backdrop on Burn Notice.

I thought about this for the last year, once I could see the light at the end of my work-permit tunnel in Cayman. It isn't like Seattle, where I could drive down for the day from Vancouver should I choose. Miami is pretty much the farthest you can get in the continental United States from Seattle. I made a point of scheduling extra time when I was in town in order to explore a little more. I started driving south rather than north and seeing what was around in Kendall and downtown and South Beach. In September when I was up for a whole week, I arranged to drive down to Key West for the weekend on Friday afternoon once I was finished work. I flew up and drove across to Naples for the weekend back in April when my parents were down there with friends having a mini-vacation.

Yesterday, when I went up to meet my cousin Raffaella and her friends who were in Miami on vacation from Italy, I saw more of Miami in one day than I had in the last four years. They had already walked around Collins and Ocean avenues and seen what they wanted to of South Beach the day and evening before, so we piled into the car and took off for Little Havana. Their Lonely Planet guide to Miami and the Keys said that Calle Ocho was the place to be on the last friday of the month when all the shops stayed open until midnight and I think the street was closed to traffic with people just hanging around partying into the night. Unfortunately it was a Wednesday afternoon at 12:30 so it was just another latin-flavored neighbourhood with fancy wrought-iron bars on the windows.

We decided to stop for lunch at Cafe Versailles. I had heard the name before, but thought it was just a coffee shop in the Miami airport near concourse F. Boy was I ever wrong. It was listed in their guidebook so we took that at face value and punched it's address into the GPS SatNav. When we arrived I was shocked to see that Cafe Versailles and it's counterpart Versailles Bakery took up almost the whole block of 35th SW and Calle Ocho. There were multiple (small parking lots) and a lot of people going in, coming out and hanging around the walk-up coffee & lunch counter that faced Calle Ocho. We found parking around the back and then went in. Is this the front door? No. Is THIS the front door? No. I guess over the last 37 years they've expanded into their neighbours space a few times. We finally found the front door and went inside. A maitre' d escorted us through the labyrinth of dining rooms to a table set for six. He asked me (in Spanish) if we wanted menus in Spanish or English. When I said "Sorry, I didn't catch that? slower please?" he said "Ah. English" and changed our menus.

It's hard to describe the dining room we were in. Mirrors everywhere, gilt fixtures, chandeliers and funky segmented ceilings were just the beginning. The mirrored walls were etched and had fluorescent tube lighting behind them so the etched parts shone through white surrounded by mirror. It was really bizarre. It reminded me of somewhere "fancy" my grandparents would have taken me when I was a kid in 1978, 1978... except it was 2008. They had a veritable army of runners, bussers, waiters and waitresses, bartenders and I can only assume the second division in the kitchen. I'd really like to know just how big their kitchen really is.

Then there was the menu: huge. Four pages huge. The first page was cold appetizers, soups, salads and a kids menu. The second page was chicken dishes. The third page was pork dishes and a few beef dishes. The fourth page was seafood with the back inside cover dedicated to sandwiches (Cuban, natch but also some very American things like a club sandwich or cheeseburger with fries. Then on the back outside cover was side dishes and beverages. Homemade sangria, beers, wines, and of course, the mojito. I had the Cuban Sandwich, and the girls ordered a variation on chicken & rice. After lunch we ordered two Tres Leches cakes for everyone to try and Cuban coffee. For six of us, with tip it only came out to $75 which is pretty darn cheap. It would have been as expensive had we gone to Chili's or some other lame-ass chain restaurant (Hey Farva, what's the name of that place you like to go with the shit all over the walls?) and not nearly as unique or interesting.

A rain band, or a squall came through just as we were finishing lunch, so I ran out to the car and brought it around so they didn't have to run through the rain. We were trying to figure out where to go next, what with the weather and all. Key West was out of the question, it's a nearly four hour drive each way. I suggested we could either go to Key Largo, or we could go to Ft Lauderdale. I looked at the sky and it was dark and ominous to the south, and relatively bright to the north, so we opted for Fort Lauderdale. We caught up with the rain that passed us by at lunch on the way up, but when we hit Las Olas it cleared up and was even sunny out when we got to the beach.

The girls were really impressed with the beach at Fort Lauderdale. I think it was more of what they were expecting Miami Beach to be like. A wide sidewalk & seawall and then sand stretching down to the waterline. All the hotels, restaurants, condos and bars were on the other side of the street, giving an unobstructed view of the beach and the ocean. We wandered south along the beach for a half hour or so, taking pictures until we all got hot and thirsty. We crossed the street and went upstairs to Lulu's Bait Shop that was overlooking the beach. I think it was the first time any of them had been in a dive bar and weren't quite sure what to make of it. We wrapped up and got back to the car by about 4:30 when our meter (which had 90 mins on it when we pulled in! score!) ran out.

As we were walking back to the car, one of my co-workers Jean called me. She was heading south from Boca Raton to get on the same flight as me, so she pulled off and met us at Carlos and Pepe's for a margarita and the best damn house-made salsa and chips. My friend Shannon met up with us too, since I'm leaving next week I won't be calling her randomly when I'm in town saying "wanna have lunch at Carlos & Pepe's?" anymore :)

We got back on the highway at about 6:45, yikes. The flight was at 8:55, cut-off time to check in is 7:55 and I had to drive from Fort Lauderdale to South Beach, and then from South Beach to the car rental return, and then catch the shuttle bus back to the airport! Yikes! We made good time on I95 south at that time of night and then got into a bit of traffic in South Beach which raised my heart rate a little but in the end, I dropped the girls off with plenty of time for them to clean up and make their 9:30 dinner reservation at the Blue Door and I got back to the airport and checked in with literally minutes to spare!

I went through security and by the time I got to the gate, they were boarding. I was the SECOND last person to get on the plane (cough-Jean!) and was asleep in my seat before the plane took off. I woke up in the air, saw that the seatbelt sign was off, grabbed my headphones, unstrapped my seatbelt and lay down across all three seats and was out like a light until the flight attendant came and gently shook me awake to put my seatbelt and take off my headphones for landing. I sent the girls a text message to let them know I made it to the plane and was back home in Cayman before getting home and crashing HARD until my alarm went off this morning at 7:30 to start my second-to-last day of work.