So the night before we left to visit Anthony's family in Miami we told Isaac we were going to Miami. He then replied, "Yeah. We going to Your-ami." Still working on the pronouns.
We had a great time visiting with Anthony's extended family (his mom and dad are both from Miami). Though, this post might not reflect that. We didn't take even ONE picture with any relative! I have no clue how we managed to do that. Grandma Puccio (Anthony's grandmother) had just gotten out of the nursing home/rehab place, so maybe her concern over her hair was what kept the camera in the bag? Not sure, but it was fun nonetheless!
And as always a ton of photos (all non-familial of course)...
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| Hwy 27 South... Ahh Florida. Billboards on the right, flat sugarcane fields, and smoke from them burning the sugarcane. |
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| The last time we drove this road was 6 1/2 years ago going down for our honeymoon (a cruise that left from Miami). There were only 2 of us then... you can't see Zay, but you can see both car seats. We've gone a lot of miles since then! |
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| Palm trees, ranch-style homes with red-tile roofs, and canals... yep...Miami! |
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| First night's food. Cuban. After a call to my BFF Cara (who speaks fluent Spanish...bc she studied it, not bc she's Latino) steered me to the flattened chicken something-or-other. The menu was in Spanish! We loved it. |
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| Coconut Grove. Quintessential Miami. Shopping, $100,000 cars e'erbody got 'em, and weird people. |
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| Like Louisville with the horses, Lakeland, FL with the swans, Miami has painted peacocks everywhere. They were all way fun! |
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| Isaac with one of the peacocks. |
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| We came back here the next day. But I can't figure out how to move the pictures in blogger. |
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| Just because he's cute |
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| eating crayons at a sidewalk Arabic restaurant |
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| pictures of food...soooo good. Shewarma's! |
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| and baklava! |
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| El Cristo on Calle Ocho (8th St) The most Cuban part of Miami. More Spanish was spoken here too! |
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| Isaiah taking in the Cuban cuisine and atmosphere. |
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| Cafe Cubano! A potent little cup of coffee! |
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| I don't even really like coffee, but I love this! So sweet, so thick, so coffee, so small. An amazing little drink indeed. |
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| Back to the park the next day. It's preserved from the time when there were no roads down to South Florida and everyone got there by boat. Interesting to imagine! |
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| The home that a guy built way back when on Biscayne Bay. |
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| My loverly Mother-in-law! |
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| Random hole in the ground...read below... |
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| Biscayne Bay. Before the Everglades began to get drained, there was so much fresh water underground that it literally pushed up into freshwater springs in the middle of Biscayne Bay (which is saltwater). So sad that all those springs are gone. :( |
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| My men in the mangroves! |
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| The Barnacle behind us. What the guy named his house way back when...like 1887 or something! |
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| Fish tank while eating sushi. |
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| I have a better picture of my MIL using her chopsticks, but this one made me laugh. Anthony reaching in to take a piece! |
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| The drive back home... "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neal Hurston is a story about folks in Florida way back when. In the book the characters are caught in a hurricane around Lake Okeechobee (the BIG lake in Florida). The wind blew the water to one side then as the hurricane passed it released and all the water rushed back flooding miles and miles around the Lake (which really happened). After that they built a levee that runs all the way around most of the lake... |
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| ...so of course we climbed up the embankment and looked out. There's a canal close, but you can see Lake Okeechobee waaaay off in the distance. It's humongo. |
And thus was our weekend in Miami. I am so glad we got to go. I actually met a couple more people in Anthony's family I've never met before. We didn't have time to see them all or hang out as much as we all wanted (they live there, so they had to work) but it was good nonetheless. Miami is one of those international cities that you have to visit in order to understand what all the hype is about. Most of the party-scene that Miami is famous for doesn't interest us one bit, but the atmosphere itself...the tropical-ness, the Latin majority (I went to Dillard's and the sales lady didn't speak English), the food, even the weirdo people, all make it a very interesting place to visit (even live?!). Yay for Miami!
