I have been there many times with Sea Trade and cruises.
quote:
April 6, 2008
Frugal Traveler | Miami Beach
Babylon on a Budget: A Weekend Challenge
By MATT GROSS
THERE’S a very fine line between tackiness and glamour, and in Miami Beach — itself a very fine strip of sand — that line sometimes vanishes. Is that maximum blonde’s minimal swimsuit cringe-making or heart-racing? Is the hotel pool scene high-class or crass? Is the cityscape, which veers from boxy condo towers to candy-colored Art Deco, an architecture buff’s dream or nightmare?Amid this bewildering display of taste and antitaste, one thing is certain: Whichever side of the line it falls on, it will be expensive. With just $500 for a weekend there with my wife, Jean, I did not expect to stay at the $1,765-a-night Setai, nor to crack claws at Joe’s Stone Crab for $22 a pound. I would be lucky to find a reasonable hotel in a good location for less than half my budget.
Silly me! In the January high season, this was not to be — with 12.5 percent hotel tax, even the cheapest rooms would have pushed us near the $300 mark, leaving little for eating, drinking and partying.
So I checked the vacation rentals section of Craigslist Miami, where I spotted this: “HoT SOBE condo for rent, inside a NICE hotel!!” The listing showed a bright little studio with a sun deck and Jacuzzi. Better yet, it was in the Royal Hotel, at Washington Avenue and Eighth Street, in the heart of South Beach. The condo’s owner normally charged $750 a week, but, with a little cajoling, I got him to nix the cleaning fee, throw in a parking permit and let the place go for a tax-free $125 a night.
When we arrived on a late Friday afternoon, however, I wished I’d bargained harder. The Royal was three stories of fading Deco wrapped in scaffolding, and the lobby smelled like street-vendor incense. The studio was better, sunny and decorated with paintings in vibrant blues and oranges, but had its own quirks: the floor lamps could only be turned off by unplugging them, and the hot water in the shower was, well, not.
But we didn’t plan to linger. Right outside the hotel were dozens of stores, many of them chains but virtually all high-end. One, a darkly glossy boutique with a name written in indecipherable calligraphy, caught Jean’s eye, so in we walked, wearing outfits so casual and low-key that we expected to be ignored by the sales staff.
Instead, we were warmly greeted by Jana, a dark-haired beauty with an exotic accent (Russian? Balkan?), who revealed the store’s name: Sex &. (Yes, that’s all.) Then she explained the concept: luxury products with a sensual flair. Roberto Cavalli chandeliers dangled from the inky ceiling, nude sculptures were draped in gold jewelry, and a pair of black leather boots designed by Michelle Pooch stood as tall as my waist. (They cost $990, reasonable considering all that leather.) Jana also offered to show us gold or silver vibrators. We declined.
We walked out, perplexed. Why would such an expensive store treat us with respect? Did they mistake us for eccentric billionaires, or was this image-obsessed city actually free of snobbery?
We pondered this question over dinner around the corner, at Puerto Sagua, Linerrich and I had breakfast there, it is a bit pricey for what you geta Cuban restaurant recommended by a friend who once lived in Miami. Puerto Sagua is old-school, with drop ceilings, poor lighting and a kitschy three-dimensional mural of a Havana street scene on one wall. The food was, naturally, hearty and cheap. Jean had super-moist roast chicken. I had the daily special, braised lamb shank, and the check came to $40 with drinks and tip. (We should have skipped the fried squid appetizer.)
The sun had gone down, but no parties had started, so we walked up Ocean Drive, the beachfront road lined with legendary hotels — the Tides, the Avalon, the Victor, all meticulously restored to their 1930s glory, all fronted by sidewalk restaurants full of tackily glamorous tourists tucking in to vast seafood dinners. It was a lively scene, but we were quite happy our budget kept us from entering it.
A few blocks past the northern end of Ocean Drive, we ended our trek at André Balazs’s Raleigh Hotel, where we splurged on a single round of drinks. Again, we expected haughtiness; again we were denied. A waiter in the lush poolside bar gave us a table reserved for someone else, and didn’t sneer when Jean asked for a virgin mojito ($7 versus my $14 Bitter Queen; total with tip, $27.58). In fact, he was downright friendly.
Next door was the Delano, a virtual circus on the shore. As we walked through the hotel lobby, new environments bloomed every dozen feet: sleek sushi bar, “Alice in Wonderland”-esque lounge, glittering dining room, outdoor plaza, shadowy garden with oversized hammocks, and pool surrounded by white beds and private bungalows. At every step, I expected a security guard to stop us, but none came. This, too, was a free party, open to all.
When Jean and I finally made it to the beach the next morning, fueled by grapefruit and watermelon juice from Las Olas Café ($7), I began to understand the city’s appeal. On its own, the golden sand was fine, but it was our fellow beachgoers who made it exciting. They were, in my humble estimation, the most attractive people I’d ever seen on a beach.
There were Brazilians in Brazilian bikinis, and Brazilians out of Brazilian bikinis. There were tattoos in abundance, and muscles and curves glistening with sunscreen. There were sights to make a plastic surgeon swoon, and enough brick-hard abs to repave Collins Avenue all the way up to Bal Harbour. Jean and I stayed for a very long time, and left only to grab a quick lunch (tamales and a Cuban sandwich, $6.15 at Las Olas).
By late afternoon, clouds had rolled in, so Jean and I checked out Lincoln Road, a pedestrian shopping street reminiscent of the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Frankly, we didn’t need to browse national chains (Apple Store, Starbucks), so we drove across Biscayne Bay to Wynwood, Miami’s nascent arts district. Most evenings, I imagine, this industrial zone of graffitied warehouses is intimidating, but fortune landed us there during a gallery walk (held the second Saturday of every month), and cheerful gangs of arty types roamed the streets, many of them toting plastic cups of wine and hefty bottles of Grolsch, free from the galleries.
Not that the galleries needed such enticements: the art was enough. Jason Middlebrook’s “Thrive,” a 6-by-8-foot portrait of an owl, looked stunning at the Kevin Bruk Gallery, and at World Class Boxing, Adam Helms’s “Untitled Portrait,” a series of Rorschach blot renderings of Che Guevara, was a clever but pointed study of the Cuban guerrilla hero’s celebrity afterlife.
Our favorite show, however, was at the Harold Golen Gallery — a real feat since a fire destroyed Mr. Golen’s previous gallery in December. Despite that tragedy, the four-artist “Live! Nude! $6 T-Bones!” show was glamorously tacky fun. In a style influenced by 1950s album covers and ’60s cartoons like Mr. Magoo, bunny rabbits puffed cigarettes, bespectacled men ogled curvy babes, a topless woman cradled a pistol, and tawdry pinup girls, airbrushed onto bowling pins, bared their garters for all and sundry. Jean and I were taken with Mark O’Connell’s winsome “Tiki Girl” and bought a signed, numbered print — a $60 bargain.
Wynwood wasn’t the only open-air event. Ten blocks north, the Design District was host of Art + Design Night, with its ultra-expensive home furnishings stores throwing open their doors to women in shiny minidresses and the banker types who’d probably paid for them. We didn’t stay long.
Instead, we returned to Ocean Drive, walked past Gianni Versace’s old mansion and settled into the News Cafe, where the late designer read his daily papers. Over simple food (spaghetti with shrimp, salads, black bean soup; $42.37) in a classy setting (chrome, leather, jazz), we watched the rich glide by — on foot and in Ferraris — and enjoyed a moment of peace in this oasis.
That dreamy feeling continued through the next morning, which Jean and I spent at the beach and at Icebox Cafe, a cute brunch spot just off Lincoln Road, where we ate scrambled eggs (mine with crabmeat, hers with herbs and ham) and glugged a pitcher of mint ice tea ($41.28).
And with a little time left before the weekend ended, we visited the Bass Museum of Art (admission $8), which had been tantalizing us with lamppost banners for the current exhibition, “Promises of Paradise: Staging Mid-Century Miami.” We hoped that by looking into its history we might at last make sense of this place.
But making sense of Miami — as the exhibition demonstrated through vintage furnishings and archival photos — was pointless, for this postwar vacation paradise was designed to upend expectations. Expensive handbags would be made of plastic, hotels would feel like circuses, and the baring of skin would become the height of fashion. “Dreams don’t make sense,” one placard explained, and we had to agree: amid the sunny, half-naked contradictions of Miami Beach, you don’t need resolution, just SPF 30, a beach towel and some fresh watermelon juice.
Total: $500.38 (including a $10 pair of beach towels at the touristy but indispensable Wings).
The President and the Penguin Hotel are the worst places I have ever stayed in North America.