Stocking Up in Miami

The only thing we wanted to make sure we did today was to purchase all the personal items that we weren’t able to send ahead or pack on the plane. In retrospect we probably could have put these things into checked luggage, but checking luggage is something we do our best to avoid as it adds a whole new and unpleasant layer to air travel. So we used the free Metro Mover transit to head over to the downtown Miami Target to stock up. This proved to be far more of a struggle than we’d hoped…the store was smallish by Target standards, doubtless due to the downtown location. The sunscreen selection was TINY, which shocked me. It’s Miami: largest city in the “Sunshine State.” It’s sunny here year-round; do people not use sunscreen? Personally, I’m paying the price of a life lived in Southern California and a lackadaisical attitude to sunscreen and sun exposure in my youth. Anyway, Target did not have our preferred Coppertone Sun Babies sunscreen (it may be marketed for babies, but it scored a perfect 100 in Consumer Reports testing, performing above its 50 SPF rating), so we bought what we could. We also bought a big ol’ pile of OFF with deet (deet is pretty evil, but it actually does work to deter mosquitoes).

We came back to the hotel to dump off our purchases, then headed out for some walking. We walked around by the Miami River mouth, then alongside Bayfront Park. Thomas and DJ wanted to ride the Ferris wheel, so they did that while Liz and I scouted around for potential dinner spots. The restaurants along the water are predictably marketed to tourists and likely reliant more on their location than their cuisine. There was a paella place that looked pretty good, though. After some thought we decided to go to Fratelli Milano, just a couple blocks from the hotel but off the water. This proved to be a good call as we had a very nice dinner. Porcini mushroom risotto for me, a delicious flocchi di pera (pasta stuffed with pear and taleggio cheese) for Liz, fettucine for Thomas, and pizza for DJ. All of it very tasty.Weiterlesen