August 6 - August 11
Thursday - Day FiveHow do you know that you are in Miami? You run into Bahamians. And if you look like Philip and I do, people talk to you in Spanish. Lucky for me I can understand Spanish even if I can't speak it (muchas gracias latinos/as!!). The first Bahamian sighting was at Office Depot first thing in the morning, where Philip and I went to pick up supplies for his father's printer. From there we went to look for something to eat. We accidentally took a wrong turn (not an uncommon happening in Miami, by the way) and ended up at a place where we'd planned to go anyway - Pioneer Shipping. There we got details on the procedure for bringing in the car to be sent to her final destination, Nassau. From there we went in search of a mall. Miami, for those of you who do not know, is a shopping mecca. Those of us in the Caribbean joke about Miami as the capital of Latin America, and if you live somewhere in the region chances are you have been to Miami at least once for shopping. It is a bilingual city, that's for sure. With no help from anybody's government, and with no one yet trying to secede from the federation, Miami is at least as bilingual as Montreal. Even people with the unlikely name of Hans are Spanish speaking. I can count the number of Anglos we ran into today on the fingers of one hand. That's not counting the Bahamians. Those don't fit on one hand. I navigate Philip onto the Palmetto Expressway and we make our way down to the upscale Dadeland Mall. There we revert into true Bahamians and buy things - after we eat brunch. I am still looking for work clothes (NO, my Pearson duds WILL NOT do!!!), and so I go into stores doing my "where are your petites" routine. I find two nice pairs of slacks on sale, nice fits, classic colours (one white, one black), and am happy. Philip half-heartedly looks for dress pants. His heart is not in it though. He is even less of a shopper than I am. We leave Dadeland and head back north. We have half decided to spend the afternoon at the movies. On the way to Dadeland, we passed another mall - the Mall of the Americas - and we noticed that it had an AMC-14-theatre cinema (nothing on the AMC-30 we passed on the way to Barrie!), so back we went. We were not keen on many of the offerings. Two stood out - 'The Klumps' (Nutty Professor II) and 'X-Men', but we couldn't decide which we preferred first. Rock breaks scissors, so we watched 'The Klumps' first. Movies in Miami are, by the way, relatively inexpensive - $5.50 for a matinee. (We paid $8.50 for 'MI-2' in Denver.) Our judgement: 'The Klumps' was very enjoyable. Eddie Murphy, Philip says, is a much under-estimated actor. His portrayal of all the different Klumps was a tour de force, and even though not all the humour was of the sophisticated variety, there were some great touches. And Janet Jackson is very easy on the eyes, one you get past memories of LaToya and Michael. 'X-Men' was equally entertaining, though in a different way. Great special effects. GREAT costumes & make-up - BOY!!! We're looking forward to the sequel, when that appears. After the movie, we head to a restaurant that we have been to before - The Melting Pot, in Kendall. Philip took me there in the early days of our courtship ("courtship?" he says, "we weren't married then?"). We went there one weekend while I was participating in the 5-week long Caribbean Writers' Institute workshop, when he came up to surprise me. We half-remember the drive, because the last time we drove round and round in Kendall till we found it. However that visit took place one month before Hurricane Andrew levelled the south-western part of Miami, and I was quite frankly surprised that the restaurant hadn't got blown away. Well, we discover that it is in newer and fancier quarters, and I privately figure it probably did get blown away in Andrew, and it rebuilt itself. It is a fondue restaurant, and we got a three-course meal: cheese fondue to begin, meat fondue to follow, and chocolate fondue to top it off. We had a wide variety of things to dip: bread, veggies and apple for the cheese; fish, shrimp, beef and chicken for the meat (with various dipping sauces), and strawberries, pineapples, bananas, brownie squares and cheesecake for dessert. We return to the hotel fuller and with a small sense of nostalgia for the end of the trip. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|