South Beach seconds
We had breakfast included in our rate at DoubleTree The Gates,
but it wasn't great - and as we discovered, expensive for those who
needed to pay. Today, my principal objective was to see more of the
Art Deco and other buildings that were situated off Ocean
Drive. I soon worked out that the key to achieving this was to move
westwards onto Washington Avenue. By this simple technique I was
able to find the US Post Office, Old City Hall, the modern police HQ
building and the Wolfsonian-FIU (Florida International University).
I visited the latter, which had an interesting exhibition aiming to
illustrate the persuasive power of art and design. Inexplicably, I
neglected to take a photo of the building's exterior.
After a mediocre lunch at Starbucks, I found myself back on Ocean Drive, topping up my haul of photos from the previous day. I returned to the hotel using the winding, traffic-free walkway along the edge of the beach. Similarly to the previous day, I was glad to take the time to relax and cool off properly on my return to base.
Later, after a false start walking to a nearby Indonesian restaurant that turned out to be closed, we returned to Lincoln Road and enjoyed splitting both a salami pizza and a delightfully anchovy-laden Caesar salad. When I eventually settled down to sleep, I was conscious that it was our final night of the trip to be spent in North America.
