I spent about 36 hours in Miami this week. After kind of not wanting to go back to Florida ever, I’m going twice in two weeks, which is weird. But this quick there-and-back for work was pretty fun.

First of all, neither I nor the conference organizers knew it was spring break season, and the hotel closest to the South Beach conference venue was a short walk from the beach. As a result it seemed the entire guest roster of the hotel was drunk, loud, and scantily clad. The walls of that hotel are also paper-thin, so when the room next to mine became a nightclub around 2am, I was off the sleep.

Anyway, the event went well and the venue was very cool. It was chilly (by Miami standards; I was still in a t-shirt) on Wednesday when I arrived, but the day of the event it got up to 28º and I was more than happy to be walking around outside. I got a coffee at this cute place on Española Way called Papo, and had plans in the afternoon to go back to what seemed to be a nice little French café called A La Folie, but there was a blaring alarm going off across the street which would have killed the vibe.

After the work event we had a few drinks (sadly, Blue Moon was the best beer on offer) and I did a bit of work before heading to dinner. I crossed the bridge into downtown Miami for drinks at Area 31 (where I had some kind of ridiculously delicious sweet & smokey cocktail) and dinner at Zuma, both at the Kimpton EPIC hotel. Zuma was an excellent spot, and I was yapping a bit too much to get much of the food, but what I had was stellar. So was the wine. The hosts let me order a bottle, which was a big mistake on their part.

Anyway, as much as I still get the heebiejeebies going to a state like Florida, I will admit that Miami has some charms.

.:.

Cover photo by Kay Gaensler, used under Creative Commons license