T. and I are in Florida, Ft. Lauderdale Florida… We flew out from San Francisco on the red eye last night. We arrived a little after 7:00 in the morning… We both managed a little sleep… I slept through the take off… The flight was fine… We flew Jet Blue… One issue… the plane was hot… in the middle, where are seats were, but was freezing at the ends… don’t you love to fly…Once on the ground we waited for checked luggage (first bag free on Jet Blue… this was why we chose them over the other guys (including my beloved Virgin America) who charge for every checked bag.) Grabbed our rental car (why do we distrust rental car companies… the correct answer would be because they are too often not trustworthy, the second question being why are they so often lying thieves, with lost reservations, and cars reserved not available…) The car procured, inspected, and mirrors adjusted we headed south towards Miami and South Beach… we found a Mexican restaurant on Washington Street that had a breakfast menu… Breakfast in Miami Beach is a challenge, it’s a community that wakes late…
From there we headed south to Vizcaya, a 1916 Estate, now historic house museum… The house was interesting… the home of John Deering of International Harvester… very wealthy, and able to afford anything he wanted. It is in the tradition of European styled estate summer homes… like Hearst’s The Enchanted Hill or San Simeion, Ringling’s Ca ’da’Zan, or any of the may Providence Rhode Island estates…
There are lots of ways to approach a house museum, especially a house like Vizcaya… on one level it is a beautiful place… the gardens extend all about, and are particularly spectacular and beautiful. So beautiful that they are one of the preferred locations for Quinceañera photos… and there were at least 8 groups there that day, taking what at first glimpse are wedding photos, but instead are celebrating the young woman’s 15th birthday… In some Latin cultures, this is as significant a celebration as a wedding.
Being a few minutes early we walked once around the house, to look about and in search of a bathroom… to reach the bathroom you had to walk once around the house, construction had blocked one corner… and behind the blocked corner were found the facilities we were in search of… so starting at the back of the house (where the entrance is, and always was located) we first headed around the north side where we found the pool, to the east side, facing Biscayne Bay, around the south side with its massive gardens, to the north west corner of the house, 100 feet from where we started, but as in so many things, we couldn’t have gotten there from here…
Having rested, we headed back to the front of the house… all the way around the house… because the entrance of course was where we started, and you can’t get to there from here… Our passage around was blocked at the side gate by a Quinceañera photo shoot… as was the front entrance (by a different shoot, by now there were so many photo groups that they were standing in line to get the good shots…)
Inside, we explored a bit while we waited for a guided tour… Photos are not allowed inside but they were not enforcing the rules, and I shot a few…
The house is interesting, the basic design very pleasant… It is in the Mediterranean style, but something of a cross of several Mediterranean styles, as was popular in the early 20th century… It’s a bit Spanish, a bit Moorish, a bit Venetian… borrowing from each without apology. As built, it was a roughly square house, around an open courtyard (which now sports a modern glass roof overhead). It fronted on Biscayne Bay, with a grand patio, and breakwater in the form of a stone ship… The entrance was not at the front, but at the rear, with its entrance road… Both the front and the rear walls were open to the elements… providing for breezes… both are now, as a museum house enclosed… While I understand why this was done… it fundamentally changes the house… The public rooms surround the lower floor, a balcony runs around three walls of inside, the front and sides, but not the rear or entrance… the guest rooms all open on to this balcony… at first glance is seemed to be a perfect home, a perfect place to entertain, understanding and adapting to local conditions… (at least before all the added glass)
Then we went into the downstairs public rooms… and we were bothered… Inside, away from the courtyard, the rooms were just too much… a spectacular example of the early 20th century rich trying to establish that they too, like Europeans had culture, by adopting the styles, and frequently whole rooms, ripped from their buildings, imported to the US and installed in their mansions… The public rooms had tapestries from France, Italy and Spain, more like hunting trophies than as beautiful objects… painted walls, from Italian villas, Over the top decorative ceilings… heavy furniture… apparently Deering preferred smaller spaces, rarely used the dining room and entertained upstairs… but he needed his trophies… The library, where business meetings were held had heavy English book cases full of books indicating knowledge, but one case was a door, and the books had been cut down, only 1” or so deep… so the books were not about knowledge but the appearance of knowledge… It bothered me…
Upstairs the bedrooms all had a theme… All overly fussy… all too filled with overly decorated antiques…
Throughout the house there was little to indicate who Deering was… It felt more like a beautiful place he paid for with the art mere trophies... not unlike a deer's head on the wall.
Having visited the house we returned to the gardens… wonderful beautiful, sometimes playful gardens, full of photographers taking pictures of overdressed 15 year old girls…
We explored, then found our car and headed back north… through downtown Miami, then on the freeway north, stopped at the Bass Pro Shop… If you haven’t visited one you need to, I had been to the stores in Oakdale California, and in Las Vegas (the Las Vegas store is an order of magnitude larger, and has a casino attached… and is truly a landmark of destination shopping) but Tina never had visited a Bass Pro Shop, so we stopped…. The scale of the store is unreal… they have live fish, game fish, big fish… If like Tina and I you are from an urban area in a blue state, you may not be aware of the culture around fishing and hunting… The store huge… with departments supporting boats and boat supplies, fishing (Tina liked the pink fishing rods for girls…) hunting (guns, reloading supplies, gun cleaning kits) there was outdoor clothing (there is nothing not available in camouflage, camo baby booties anyone?) but also camping supplies and if you are successful in the hunt, cooking equipment, sausage casings, recipe books, and folding filet tables. They had a single aisle dedicated to turkey fryers… of course also adaptable to other outdoor cooking, and most disturbingly, they were scheduled to unveil their Christmas merchandize that evening… But as we left, just outside we found our “it” for the day… the live bait vending machine… a typical soft drink machine adapted to dispense worms and night crawlers and such… guaranteed to be alive… Tina and I, pleased to know that if we found a need for live bait we could in fact get it, day or night, got in the car and headed north towards Ft Lauderdale and our hotel for the night…
We stayed at the Riverside, on Los Olas Blvd… they upgraded us to a balcony room, which by chance faced the cruise port, a couple of miles away. That evening we could see ships leaving… a virtual parade of ships… tomorrow we will be part of the parade, abet a bit later than the others… we sail at 10:00 pm
We walked around… Los Olas is a street full of shops catering to those with money, there were Ferraris and other exotic cars in evidence… but there were also empty store fronts, city busses and tee shirt tourists… The weather was by their standards cold… (by the standards of Kodiak Alaska it would have been a heat wave) the first cold front of the season had blown in… We had a drink in the hotel’s bar (outside table) and eventually made our way across the street to Johnny V’s for dinner…
Johnny V’s is the restaurant owned by celebrity chief Johnny Vinczencz. He competed on Iron Chief… (against Bobby Flay, battle Citrus, Bobby Flay won) Our dinner was wonderful… I had the game trio… Venison steak, Ostrich chop, and bunny sausage, Tina had the special Ahi with crab mashed potatoes… There was an amuse, spicy tomato soup, with goat cheese on a cracker… plus desert… I had a cheese plate… they are especially proud of their cheese selection… It was an “Oh my god moment” There was wine involved… We would recommend the restaurant… highly.
This morning we slept in, watched the ships come in… I worked on the blog… I uploaded photos… we are now packing and getting ready to spend the day in Ft Lauderdale before boarding the ship late today (about 6:00… boarding starts at 4:00, but that will be a zoo… we will board fashionably late…)
No comments:
Post a Comment