Miami (March 2022)
Miami in March/April was decently warm and humid, but perfect for walking about at night. The primary reason for Miami was to catch a Disney Cruise with our daughter during spring break. We initially just had a full day to explore Miami, so we stayed in South Beach. I took a jog along the beach area in the morning, and we hung out at the beach for a few hours.
Food:
- Hosteria Romana in South Beach was near our hotel and was open late, so we got a nice filling meal of risotto, pizza and pasta here.
- Havana 1957 was pretty busy in the evenings, and the food was reasonable. Looks like a local chain since we saw a few more locations while in Miami.
- Puerto Sagua serves a heafty Arroz con Pollo and we had a cubano as well, in a place that looks like a converted old 60s diner. I get the feeling locals like this place.
- Rosetta Bakery The prosciutto sandwiches and berry muffins were amazing, we ended up going to two locations! We will go back again next time.
Other Notable Attractions
- Lincoln Rd has an outdoor mall with food and stores for a nice place to walk about.
- Lummus Park in front of Ocean Dr. is a great place for a morning jog and to check out the Art Deco architecture.
- Frost Science The aquarium/planetarium was the perfect place for families with kids to spend a couple hours after a cruise and before heading to the airport.
Miami Part 2
Our original itinerary was to return from the 5 night cruise, and take a flight back the same day to San Francisco (SFO). Unfortunately, due to weather our flight was cancelled along with what looked like about 1/3 of all other flights. As you can imagine, the airport was a mess and long lines at the ticketing lines to reschedule. We ended up 2 extra days in Miami.
Lessons learned:
- Low chance of catching a flight on standby in situations like this, everyone wants to give it a go. We ended up losing a whole day at the airport when we could have accepted the 2 day schedule change.
- While the airline did put us in a hotel for the first night, booking took hours. While the hotel was near the airport, that also means not near anything else for a multi night stay. It was already late though, so we just needed a place to sleep.
- Our daughter ended up missing one day of school, which was our only concern as retirees. It’s not the end of the world for kindergarten.
- We got to use our Priority Pass (from our credit card) for each departure day, so at least we had free meals and most importantly beer.
Brickell
We stayed in Brickell and this turned out to be a fun part of town with a good selection of food and a newish trendy mall. Due to post-covid, the mall seemed a bit empty. It was also relatively near the Miami Seaquarium which we checked out for half a day. I can describe this place as a mini Sea World, which had dolphin and sea lion shows, but probably won’t ever go back. It was a bit run down and the Killer Whale show has been retired, so a half day was plenty to see everything… the highlights might have been some big turtles. I would definitely recommend the Frost Aquarium/Planetarium instead.
For dinner we ate at North Italia which was fine. I didn’t realize they had locations around the US, so not exactly unique. I will give a thumbsup for being family friendly and our kid loved the cheese pizza.