2008 Jun 06 | Fort Lauderdale, Miami


A girl who had lived in my room in Berkeley had left some of these things on the windows, and I wanted to get some. I never knew what they were called, though, and I tried searching on the internet for quite a while using different words until I gave up.



These are a neat idea; they turn color in the sun.



The boardwalk out from Commercial Avenue in Fort Lauderdale basically splits the beach into two areas.



The southern side is high school kids on little boards.



And the northern side is older people.



The northern side also has a few people trying to surf, but nobody stays up for more than a few seconds.



The Goodyear blimp flew over the beach. Apparently you can get rides in it.



On Friday I went to Miami for the day. These were my maps.



This is Lincoln Street in South Beach, which has a bunch of shops.



It's actually more like an outdoor mall. There is no traffic and they even have directories scattered around.



I had breakfast there and ordered the jumbo meal with three pancakes. It took me a few seconds to find them, though.



There are also lots of shops along Washington and Collins Avenues.



All of the tourist shops had the exact same towels, shirts, postcards, shoes, and everything. It was kind of annoying because I kept going into different stores expecting at least slightly different items.



Then I went to Parrot Jungle. It was expensive to get in and expensive to park, so I decided to just skip it.



Vizcaya Gardens was really neat, though. I wasn't expecting a house, though. Each of the rooms was designed to be from a different time period.



All of the doors fit into the wall decoration and could be kind of hard to find. This one was in a fake bookcase.



A room with a really high ceiling.



There are three sets of pillars in this room, each set made from a different type of marble.



The house was really advanced for the time. Here is a board that lets servants know which room they are wanted in.



Some neat windows.



An area on one side of the house.



A view of the house from the dock.



There were tons of photographers for weddings, yearbooks, and models.



Guests could go out to the break on the left on a gondola.



Some of the gardens.



I also stopped by the Venetian Pool. I was just a swimming pool, though; I thought it would be bigger with tours and things.



Coral Castle is south of Miami a bit.



It was built by one guy using just pulleys and other simple tools.



A view of the central area.



On the way back to Fort Lauderdale I got stuck in traffic. It wasn't even 3pm, so I thought I would be gone before rush hour, but apparently not.



I assumed these helicopters were for traffic reports.



That evening I went out to look at the clubs. South Beach has most of them along Washington Avenue. These are people waiting to get into Mint.



And at the other end of the street was a giant crowd for Opium Garden and Prive. Mansion also had a fairly big line.



The other part of Miami with a bunch of clubs close together was downtown, although it was in a worse neighborhood.



This seems similar to a participation ribbon, which I've never been fond of because they always remind you that you didn't win.