The South Beach experience Sorry guys, was having some broadband connection issues & hence uploading this post a bit late
After a week's stay in Chicago, I boarded a United flight to Miami. As we approached Miami international airport, the plane had to take a deft right turn which made it fly over the Miami beach & then inland towards the airport. This experience was simply exhilarating because you are flying over the sea at one point & then suddenly the plane loses altitude & you see the several beach-homes near the beach. It was a really neat sight!! Miami did not disappoint me at it's first impression. I took a cab from the airport to the hotel. The cabbie was a Pakistani who started an unnecessary deabate over which cricket team is better - Indian or Pakistani!! This goes to show that you can take people out of the sub-continent but you cannot take the sub-continent out of the people. Luckily for me, the taxi ride was just 30 mins from the airport & I did not have to debate too much with the Pakistani. The Hilton Airport hotel was huge but was a disappointment in terms of feel & ambience as compared to the Hilton Garden Inn in Chicago. In the evening, I took a walk down several blocks from the hotel & somehow I immediately felt at home in the surroundings. The reason for this maybe that Miami has a more multi-cultural feel to it with a whole lot of South Americans & Asians around whereas Chicago comes across as a typical white-American city. The climate was also warmer as compared to Chicago & this was one more reason to feel at home. Picked up some dinner at a McDonald's outlet close-by. The spicest dish that they had was something called as "spicy chicken" & still it was nowhere close to our mildest of Indian spiced dishes.
After a week of office-work, the weekend was finally approaching & I was really looking forward to it. On Saturday morning, I hitched a cab & sounded South Beach as my destination to the driver. South Beach is the place to visit if you are in Miami. Each city has it's own special locality which captures the essence of the place & this is what South Beach is to Miami. During this drive to South Beach we passed along some cruise ships on the way which were taking onboard holiday makers.
After about an hour's drive, I landed at South Beach & the sound of the waves beckoned me. The first thing that I noticed about the beach was that it was amazingly clean even though there were several hundred people at the beach at that time. The second thing that I noticed was that it was a topless beach!! I could see small children playing around in the sand with hot bodies lying totally oblivious to their affairs. Since I was alone, I placed a small mat that I was carrying on a section of the beach & was soaking in the beautiful atmosphere. I could see that people all around were really having a great time & they took their holidays seriously. If this was India you could probably see half the people over their cell-phones still talking business/work even though they might be on vacation.
After spending close to an hour on the beach, I decided to take a walk & took the lane running parallel to the beach. This lane had a whole lot of small eateries which offered almost all types of world cuisine to it's customers. At some distance, I could see a beach party in progress in a temporary enclosure(I assume to avoid onlookers from seeing what is going on inside). I was able to catch a glimpse & could make out that it was an "MTV grind" kind of party where people just kept dancing in a daze with some good techno music playing. One thing which stood out during this walk(as pointed out by Martin earlier) was that Miami was the place to be if you wanted to see some fine cars & bikes, not to mention some of the most beautiful people. I clicked a hell lot of snaps of amazing cars that you usually see only in hip Hollywood movies. I had to eventually delete several snaps of cars & bikes because I was running out of memory. Attached below are some sights from this part of Miami.
More to follow.....!! |