Miami: the breeze tells you that you have arrived. Florida is about as far south you can go in North America.
South Beach, Miami, doesn’t even look or feel entirely like America. People are speaking Spanish, eating Cuban food, sitting outside buildings painted in pastel shades. The caretaker of the youth hostel where I stayed turned out to be an expert on Art Deco, a style which is common in the city. I struck up a conversation with an architecture student while sipping Corona at a cafe. He told me that Mumbai had the second-largest number of Art Deco buildings in the world, after Miami. I was ashamed of my ignorance!
If, like me, you’re the kind of person who enjoys meeting travel enthusiasts and chatting with random strangers, you would probably be inclined to stay at an international youth hostel and use public transport. That’s exactly what I did, and boy, did I have a blast.
Small, intimate youth hostels are preferable to impersonal hotels. Apart from not being able to afford hotels, while travelling I spend as little time as possible sleeping. In a youth hostel one has the opportunity to make friends with people from all over the world — young people with crazy jobs that inspire you and at times make you wonder: Can people with their kind of professions actually afford to take holidays?
I met an aboriginal artist who lives on the East Coast and sells his work from a cart. It is a setup similar to our local mangal bazaar. Another resident of my hostel room had an even more interesting profession. She was a professional clown. Clowning was her way to earn a living and pay for her “whisky and cigarettes”.
When I wasn’t hearing about the intricacies of the professional clown industry, I roamed on foot. South Beach is one of the main attractions of Miami and that’s where I spent time, looking around and taking photographs. The area straddles three streets, named Washington, Collins and Lincoln.
My favourite was Washington. The street is home to hundreds of small- and medium-scale hotels (a decent room costs $15-200), and the buildings have an old-world charm to them. They take you back to the days when polka dots and bell-bottoms were in vogue. The architecture reminded me of a 1960s movie set, with the actor driving a Cadillac Fleetwood and the actresses in gowns, with hats covering their faces.
Collins St is the place to go when you have a colossal appetite. The street is lined with restaurants facing the sea. To promote themselves, the restaurants use the “happy hour” technique for kitchen items, too. Go as a group and the food will taste even better at half-price. Collins has good Italian, Argentinean and Cuban eateries.
The lazy culture of Miami makes dinner something of an event. People spend hours over meals, engaged in leisurely conversation. If you choose to have your meal at a rooftop restaurant in Collins, it doesn’t get more romantic than that. A nice breeze, good music, excellent food and beautiful people — life is perfect.
Lincoln St is a place better hidden from the eyes of your wife and daughter, because it’s filled with enough shopping arcades to consume hours of their time.
Miami also has the right kind of music. It has inherited music and dance forms from its varied immigrant population. Cubans brought the conga and rumba, which are still very popular in American culture. Dominicans brought bachata and merengue, while Colombians brought vallenato. West Indians and Caribbeans came with reggae, soca and kompa sorts.
The belly-moving music with finger-licking food and the sea make Miami the party capital of the world. If you are keen to join the party, you have two choices: spend a bomb and go to an expensive hotel club, or get invited to a local house party. The second is definitely more fun.
Speaking of dancing, if you have not done or seen any in Miami, you have missed a lot. Not knowing how to dance isn’t an excuse here, my roommate from the youth hostel told me, as she pulled me onto the floor. There was something magical about the place, the music and the whole atmosphere — it’s hard to explain. She was an exceptionally good dancer, and when I complimented her, she laughed and said that she was Italian and that all Italians were good dancers!
It was her fifth visit to the city and she had clearly done this before. My dubious bhangra skills didn’t allow me to last long on the floor, but the advantage of salsa is that if your partner is very good, you can get away with making a bit of a fool of yourself.
I ought to know!
Miami is expensive, so to enter a decent club one might easily shell out $50 just for the cover charge. For people who want to get away with $5-10 per head, ask instead for Mango’s Tropical Café on South Beach, facing the seashore. Mango’s is a Hawaiian kind of club, with a two-storey tropical décor theme going. It was recommended by everyone we asked. I soon found out why: it had about an equal ratio of tourists and locals. With the sultry sounds of reggae, Latin and Caribbean music, it’s the right place to shake away the day-long tiredness and down some amazing drinks (I recommend the Havana Mojito, the best I ever tried).
Apart from great music and drinks, gym instructors moonlight as waiters and waitresses. They take turns to perform salsa numbers, one after another. On my night at Mango’s, this went on till 4 am. It was hard to believe it was a Wednesday night. God knows what it’s like on Saturdays!
Last but not least, in Miami you must not miss the authentic Cuban cuisine. Needless to say, the best place to have it is in Little Havana, the largest Cuban settlement in the world outside Cuba. In the heart of Miami, this is the only place you will find a good hand-rolled cigar.
If you like walking, I suggest a walk from downtown to Little Havana. The 30-minute stroll is a walk in time. You can actually see the architecture changing into old-time Cuba as you approach 27th Avenue. If you have the luxury of planning your trip, make sure to visit on the last Friday of any month. This is known as Viernes Culturales (Cultural Friday), and involves a massive Latin street party with fantastic music, dancing and brilliant local food, and is great fun for the whole family.
As for Cuban food, don’t leave without tasting some Guinea hen fricassee. This dish was invented in Cuba after Castro came to power, when food shortages and rationing began. This slowly cooked meat of a small Cuban bird called the Guinea hen is a delicacy. Cooked well, the meat is tender and full of flavour. On an island where sugarcane is the most important crop, rum — the alcohol produced from sugarcane — finds its way into many dishes, especially desserts. So it would not be fair if you left Miami without trying Cake De Ron, or rum cake.
My weekend could not have been better. My next stop? Key West, the southernmost point of America — only 90 miles from Cuba.
