MIAMI AND SOUTH BEACH

Wednesday, September 30 – We took one of the Toll-by-Plate highways to Miami Beach, Florida, this morning. This method of toll roads has a camera that reads your license plate, and then they send you a bill for usage at the end of 30 days. The alternative here in Miami, Florida, is the Sun Pass for the toll roads, a cheaper alternative, that has a toll transponder on the inside of your windshield. You put money in your account that is then debited when you pass under the overhead reader. A typical cost is 25¢ for a length of highway on the Sun Pass verses a 50¢ charge with the Toll-by-Plate system.

Miami

The third alternative is to take surface streets with no tolls. We tried this on the way down to Miami when we were towing the trailer. The bad thing about this cheaper solution is that the streets are jammed with traffic. For example, Google Maps predicted our trip this morning at 45 minutes using the toll road. On the free surface streets the time predicted was 2 hours 15 minutes.

Upon arriving in South Beach, the next problem is finding a parking space for a dually pick-up truck. Street parking meters were not a very good solution due to narrow streets and heavy traffic. After cruising around for 20 minutes searching for a space we finally found a parking lot.

We ran up over the sand dune to see the famous Miami beach. Nice, but where do you park to enjoy this beach? We saw several people walking toward the beach on our way back to town, so I guess they park on the street at parking meters, or maybe they were coming from one of the many hotels.

The colorful and famous town of South Beach is beautiful even in the daylight. Must be something to see at night. We did part of the Art Deco walk. All the hotels were serving breakfast and lunch at tables set-up on their front sidewalks. It was really hot and humid for el fresco dining in Paul's opinion.

One of the most photographed Art Deco Hotels.

A 79-room art-deco gem.

1936 art-deco beauty.

Ocean Drive is the main drag in South Beach. One side of the Drive has a sidewalk. On the other side, pedestrians have to walk through all the outside eating areas. We must have been asked 15 times if we would like to eat breakfast.

What would Florida be without Flamingos?

After walking the streets for a couple miles and admiring the famous South Beach architecture and stopping at a couple touristy shops, we returned to the truck and headed to the Little Havana district.

We were headed to one of the famous Cuban restaurants Marsha found on the Internet. It comes highly rated on TripAdvisor. We stopped at La Carreta restaurant. Yep, we even had a waitress that spoke pretty-good English.

 

We started out with their famous Sangria Mojitos. We never had a Mojito with a sugar cane in it. Yummy!

We had “Picadillo a la Cubana” and “Ropa Vieja”. Both were recommended. We rarely take photos of our food. But since Cuban food isn’t what many of our readers eat, we thought we would show you what it looks like. The yellow items are Sweet Plantains. They are a small bananas. We had these in Mission, TX. Awesome.

After a delicious lunch, we decided to head back to the campground to beat rush-hour and to relax in the AC for the remainder of the day.

On Friday, we are headed for the Keys. We will be staying at the Elks in Tavernier, FL.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day!