Let's Travel!
I love to travel so I thought I'd share some of my travel tips and favorite places to visit in a series of travel guides titled: The Cubby Long Weekend Guide (insert city). I thought I'd start with Miami and South Beach, my home base for many years, as it's one of the most popular destinations in the world.
Miami and South Beach are now year-round destinations. The nightlife industry, the fuel that drives the engine, churns all through the summer, never letting up. Most of the top bars and clubs have licenses that permit them to remain open selling liquor till 5am.
Chefs from all over the world have established outposts on South Beach, eager to be part of the scene.
Boutique hotels (the W, the Setai, the Gale, etc.) have flooded in and cranked up the quality of service to the 4- and even 5-Star levels. (Trust me, child, it wasn’t always like this.)
This really is a world-class town. And in this book I will share some things I like about it (and a few I don’t.) This is not a book to tell you how to get from your hometown to Miami International Airport, or from MIA to South Beach. You can figure that out by yourself. (And if you can’t, stay home.)
It’s also not a comprehensive book covering the County. It’s not a phone book or something purporting to cover everything. God forbid. Who’d want to read such a book? No. This, like my other Guides, is my personal take on the scene for visitors, not necessarily residents. Thus, there are no listings for some of the great restaurants I’ve trekked to in South and West Miami. The listings are intentionally brief, so they can be digested fast.
WHY MIAMI?
Because it may be the most interesting city in the U.S. There are probably only a handful of cities in America that offer truly distinctive “feels,” and by that I mean a unique sensation you get when you’re there that you don’t get anywhere else.
Boston has it, Charleston has it, New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, Chicago, Vegas and a handful of other cities large and small have it. But, to be honest, if you removed my blindfold on a street in Buffalo or Cleveland, I’d have a hard time telling them apart at first glance. (Or even second glance.)
Not so Miami.
And it’s not all sex, drugs and rock ’n roll. (Well ... it’s not, really.) It’s home to some major league cultural institutions, from the Miami City Ballet headed by Lourdes Lopez; the New World Symphony founded by Michael Tilson Thomas, the stupendously successful Art Basel. The off-the-wall collection of tens of thousands of items of decorative and propaganda art assembled by Mickey Wolfson in his Wolfsonian Museum now operated by FIU is worth a trip to Miami all by itself. As is the South Beach Wine & Food Festival pushed to the top of the heap in its category by the relentless energy of Lee Brian Schrager. Schrager and the others have an infectious optimism that has transformed small start-ups into world-class institutions that have made lasting contributions in their fields.
As a young city, these institutions were founded and nurtured by strong-willed individuals. And built from the ground up. If they began with something to prove, they proved it.
But I’m assuming you know why you’re coming here. I’m not here to sell you on the town. If it’s February, it’s probably got a lot more to do with a suntan than with Schumann, and you’re probably more interested in a good mojito than Mozart. And you might not care or even know the difference between a Degas and a Duchamp, a Picasso and a Pissarro. And maybe you are here because of the sex, drugs and rock ’n roll. Whatever.
Let’s face it: how many towns in America let their clubs, bars and dives stay open till 5am selling booze? (And everything else—they don’t call it Sodom by the Sea for nuttin’!)
Miami has an edge. And the edge is what’s most interesting about it, with the hundred different ethnic influences all mixing together to make it so dramatic, Mozart and the ballet notwithstanding.
https://www.amazon.com/Miami-South-Beach-Cubby-Weekend/dp/B0BN2M6G4M/ref=sr_1_1?crid=39QCNHBUMMJTQ&keywords=cubby+long+weekend+guide+miami&qid=1672847294&sprefix=%2Caps%2C82&sr=8-1
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