Miami

We were only in Miami for a few hours (we arrived early in the morning and had to be on a flight to LA at 3 pm), so everyone at home thought I was crazy when I proposed getting a car and driving around a bit and visiting a friend. Ray didn't fancy driving in an unknown city after a bad night's sleep and without certainty of good navigation and the kids kind of sided with him because of the added stress. But I pushed it, and got my way (insert little devil emoji, only Blogs appear not to have them!)
So, as soon as we had cleared immigration and returned our suitcases, we set off to explore. We drove to Miami Beach, went down to the edge of the water and took pictures of the seagulls. The place was pretty empty, which is not surprising considering it was 8 in the morning of January 1st. It wasn't too warm yet either, but it was bright and it seemed it would be a nice day. We walked along the "costanera" and found many buildings that reminded us of our house in BA (all the Art Deco and the bright colours). We picked one of the restaurants that were open to have our first American breakfast (the kids wanted pancakes!) and the experience lived up to the expectations.

From there, we drove along the beach a bit more, surprised to see a large number of shops that were actually open on this holiday of holidays, and then we left Miami Beach and drove on to Wynwood, an area I had never visited. We were due to meet Karen, a friend of mine from primary school, and her family. As I said, I had never visited Wynwood, because I had not had a reason to go there, but having been, I can say it is a place worth visiting. Somewhere I've seen it described as an outdoor museum, and I think it's the best possible description. It is all about street art of the most sophisticated kind, but not only on walls, but pavements, trees and everywhere where art will fit. The other interesting feature of the area is that it is a reclaimed space that was an industrial area that had become less than pleasant. And the reclaiming is still going on. We even saw a painter at work while we walked around. He was of course filming himself while he was doing it, probably to upload it to some social medium or other.

 A few blocks down the road we got to Wynwood Kitchen and Bar, in itself an exponent of all this art. There we met Karen, her husband Tom and her three sons. Karen and I attended most of primary school together at Lenguas Vivas. Talking it over, we concluded that we must have missed each other towards the end as she left before the end of 7th grade and I returned from England just after that. She moved to the States and we wrote letters to each other for a while. I remember we also attended a couple of years of Expresión Corporal at the Instituto Nacional de Danzas when we were very little (6 or 7). She then went on to serious dance school both in Argentina and in the States and when I came to the States in the late 80s, I remember I went to see her dance, in Washington, I believe. Super moving to see your friend in a tu-tu on stage doing impossible and graceful things you can never even consider attempting! There are a couple of scary pictures with huge shoulder pads and frightening hairdos from that visit that I will spare you. In any event, at some point, we lost track of each other and, as in many cases, it was Facebook that re-united us. And there I also found the fabulous pictures of the work she does teaching her passion to kids in Ballet & Beyond.

In the end the lunch we shared was yummy (wonderful tapas picked by Tom because we were too busy chatting and catching up) but all too short! It was lovely to see Karen again and meet her family and we hope we can host them in Buenos Aires when they come for a visit in the not-too-distant future!

And with that, we had to say good bye for now to sunny Miami and drive to the airport, return the car and head for our gate. We got there with just sufficient time to not be late. But, of course, this could not be missing for one of our American trips: there was a delay. Part of the crew were apparently coming on a flight from Havana; they had obviously had too much fun there and were running late. It wasn't a huge delay, but enough to get the recognition I deserved (i.e. "Imagine if we had stayed at the airport and after waiting for 5-6 hours, the flight had been delayed! That wouldn't have been fun!" So I was vindicated! (insert super-smiling smiley)