Miami

I don’t know a better way to kick off the day than with a couple of café con leche(s) – it’s always weird pluralizing nouns in a romance languages – and guava pastries. By the time the crash from the sugar begins setting in, the caffeine from the coffee takes over.

We met up with the fam yesterday morning at the famous Versailles – the south Florida mainstay for Cuban food, not Louis’ bankrupting palace. After I gringo’d myself out by asking for the café con leche without sugar, a sweet little Cuban lady in her early 80s walked up to the table and pointed at me as she began to tell me in Spanish that I wasn’t Cuban.

Huh…the girl with freckles and curly, somewhat reddish hair wasn’t Cuban? How’d they know? Continue reading

Remember going to the water park as a kid and wishing you never had to leave?  Today was one of those days…only we’re not children, and we weren’t at a water park precisely.

We were at the Venetian Pool – a spring fed pool made from a coral quarry – so perhaps even cooler than typical water parks with concrete bottoms and chlorinated water pumped in. Continue reading

True story: I’m a Florida native who somehow reached her 30s before ever going to Miami.

My husband, who is from this fair city, has loved me despite that fact.  But this weekend, a family wedding at the famed Biltmore (the peach hotel, not the sprawling estate) finally got me that check in the box.

We lucked out with a room at the Hotel St. Michel, a European boutique hotel built in 1926.  It was preserved masterfully with every room unique in its furnishings and artwork.  And the furniture is all antique (we actually have a wardrobe in which to hang our clothes…à la, the Lion and the Witch). Continue reading