Violet Sky

This was our second time going to Miami. The first time we went was in December of 2022. Depending on which member of the family you asked, it was either an incredible success or one of the worst trips we’ve ever had – the first part of the trip went off without a hitch, but the second part, where we flew back to Portland and had Christmas in our own home, went very poorly after a major ice storm blanketed the Pacific Northwest and cancelled all our flights back home. We recovered from this by driving up to Orlando and spending Christmas day at Universal Studios, but the kids were still really disappointed by a hotel room Christmas. Due to this experience, both of them declined to return with us this year.

Within the last couple of years. Alaska added a direct PDX -> MIA flight to their routes. Flying PDX -> FLL is usually cheaper, but with only the two of us to deal with, we decided to spent the few extra bucks and skip the 20 minute drive from Fort Lauderdale to Miami proper. The flight was uneventful and saw us landing right after sunset.

Obviously, the first place we went after we picked up the rental car was Pollo Tropical. The Californian in me thinks of it as a Caribbean El Pollo Loco, but I can’t really think of a non-regional chicken chain that would be equivalent. In any case, it scratched the itch I’ve had since the last time we were in Miami.

The next day was mostly running around getting ourselves sorted, going to a high end outdoor shopping mall, and trying a few of the food places on our list. Our dining last time was pretty hindered by the kids being too picky to risk expensive menus on, so we had a few queued up.

At Fiola, we tried their prix fixe lunch, each getting the exact same items: wagyu beef carpaccio appetizer, wagyu steak and Tuscan fries main, and budino di cioccolato dessert. We also got the sourdough, honey, and whipped ricotta seen first in the slideshow. Everything was excellent, though I hadn’t looked to see if they had a dress code so we felt a bit out of place (even if they did let us in).

At Edan Bistro, I was initially turned off by what they called a “tuna cracker” – I was imagining a mayonnaise-based tuna salad cracker situation, not unlike the Bumblebee kits sold in stores here. Luckily, I took a spin through their Instagram, where I discovered that it was instead raw tuna on a cracker made of baked parmesan cheese. Delicious! We also had the duck magret with mustard and radish (very good) and the pumpkin risotto. Every single item on we ate was delicious, but the pumpkin risotto with meat broth was so rich and sumptuous that I found myself sneaking bites after I was already full. The risotto plus some of our leftover wagyu steak from lunch made for a very luxurious breakfast the next morning.

The next day, our focus was on getting back out to the air boat excursion. We had done this on our prior trip and it was a huge hit. I didn’t know what to expect initially, and had even thought it might not be very fun, but wow, was I totally wrong. It was one of the highlights of the last trip, and it was the first thing I wanted to do on this trip. This time, a friend of mine and her husband also joined us, which was extra fun.

My friend’s husband is a herpetologist, so being more knowledgable than me about alligators, he was a little concerned that we wouldn’t see very many of them due to it being overcast. Luckily, his fears were unfounded, and we saw approximately a dozen alligators and some fun birds. No bee hive swarming, unlike last time, but that was okay. One of the birds landed on the front of our boat, and then flew alongside us for quite a ways, eyeballing the group the whole time. My friend said that when they last did this ride, the tour guide had been feeding them Cheetos. No Cheetos today, just a fun bird escort.

Afterwards, we took a trip out to Everglades National Park, where we saw some brief glimpses of manatees at the Visitor Center in Flamingo. On the way back, we stopped at another visitor center, which has a raised walking trail. This allows you to see some of the Everglades fish in a way that we couldn’t on the air boat, while still providing plenty of access to birds and alligators. Both visitor centers were being wheeled over by plenty of vultures, which are also omnipresent in Miami itself.

Our last full day in Miami, we decided to head to Wynwood. Wynwood is an arts district adjacent to downtown Miami, and is an up-and-coming or rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, depending on who you ask. We had stayed on the fringe edge of Wynwood the last time we were in Miami, but somehow had not managed to find our way to the core of the district, with the hip shops and street art. I wanted to find some vegan ice cream and Wynwood had a shop that was both vegan and soy-free, so we headed to V Gelato after lunch.

I really, really love street art – I find it so impressive what the artists manage to do with such a large canvas, and especially the amount of detail they manage to achieve at such a scale. Wynwood was a phenomenal place to wander around with a cup of ice cream, admiring the art and stopping in some of the shop. We picked up a vintage Inter Milan and even more vintage ACF Fiorentina scarf at one such shop. But mostly, we wove up and down the streets looking at all the art.

For our last spendy meal of the trip, we booked an early reservation at Ghee, where we both participated in the tasting menu. Despite trying to careful reserve our appetite for the entire experience, we still found ourselves stuffed by the end, and it was only through sheer strength of will (and a burning desire to eat it) that I was able to partake in dessert.

Our flight left around 7 p.m. the next day, so we had to find something that was diverting enough to take up several hours after check-out but that also wouldn’t be difficult to extract ourselves from when it came time to leave. We originally drove out to South Beach with the intent of laying on the beach, but intermittent rain and the resulting mugginess caused us to turn around and drive right back into Miami proper. I was really interested in seeing an old Spanish monastery, but since it was the holiday season, it was closed. My runner up “old thing to look at” was the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, so we decided to try that instead.

Vizcaya is the former estate of a wealthy businessman who believed that the warm air and mild climate would cure his anemia. His massive estate cost $15 million and featured a variety of Renaissance Europe-inspired styles, and featured Miami’s first rotary telephone. The man never married, and eventually the estate fell into the possession of the county, who has been maintaining it while operating it as a museum. I don’t know that I would go back a second time, but it was definitely a spot worth visiting once. If I didn’t have a dog at home, maybe I could replace my sliding class door with one of those beautiful stained class doors!

As our day started at 5 a.m. Pacific and was going to end around midnight Pacific, we treated ourselves to some affogatos back at V Gelato. Our trip to the airport and our flight back was thankfully completely different than our last Miami flight experience, and we arrived home exhausted but glad to have experienced some sunshine for a few days. Until next time, Miami!