Lena and I arrived in Miami on May 24th. The evening sun was still glimmering in the tall buildings as we drove from the airport back to our flat. The heat felt nice and relaxing. We had a drink on he balcony in the sunset before unpacking and discussed plans for the upcoming days. Without any rush or exhausting sightseeing we managed to do a lot during the 7 days of Lena's visit. In danger of sounding a bit nerdy - I think jetlag from Norway did us a favor by forcing us out of bed pretty early every morning. The day becomes so much longer starting at 7 or 8 am than starting at noon. Even on holiday.
We did some sightseeing on Miami Beach and downtown Miami, had lunch in the Miami design district, went on alligator safari, went shopping, did the motorbiking thing, spent time on the beach ...
Walking on the beach was one of those favorite activities that we did more than once. The heat has picked up in this tropical area so walking in the morning is preferable.
During one of our morning walks, we came across an eeny-wheeny little baby crab that was washed far ashore by the waves. It was so small that it didn't even have a hard shell on its body. We both found it kind of sad watching it struggle to get back into the water. A couple of meters of sand looked like a couple of miles of desert for the little fellow.
Lena took pity on him and wanted to help the little creature back into it's desired environment. She picked it up very gently, studied it in her palm for a moment, then pulled her arm back to throw it as far out into the sea as possible. I think the intention was to throw the little thing far enough into the sea so that another wave ride was unlikely to bring it back onto the beach. For me it was like observing a passionate full force pitch in slow motion - resulting an a very confused expression on Lena's face because she instantly lost sight of the crab after it left her hand. The little creature did not fly out into the ocean the way one should expect from the direction of the throw. Due to the wind from the sea, it went straight up in the air, slightly backwards and right back at Lena, almost hitting her in the face on its way down.
One of the many great pleasures in Miami and surroundings, like mentioned before, is food. Lena's holiday album also reveals taking part in this pleasure. You can name whatever possible imaginable food and probably find a place for it somewhere in Miami. But the fun thing is finding the good spots, the celebrated and famous places where chef's have enjoyed great renome and publicity year after year and the staff is dedicated to sticking to the style and tradition they're well known for.
Joe's Stone Crabs is a place like that. Apparently the place has been there for more than 90 years which is considered a pretty long time according to American timescale. We decided to check it out during Memorial Weekend, on the Sunday.
I'll definitely support their reputation - nice place, great atmosphere and really nice crab. Slightly different crab experience this time - no cute little baby crabs, only large dangerous claws that you would't get anywhere near if they were alive.
The waitress explained to us that since we're outside of crab season, the stone crabs that they could offer were crab claws from Alaska. The way they harvest these claws is by pulling them off the bodies of live crabs and dropping the crab bodies back into the sea so that the claws can grow back out again. We looked at each other and were all thinking that this sounds a bit cruel ... But we were at the famous crab shack to eat some crab so what the hell - we went for those claws. Alaska is pretty far away anyways.
Crab claws is heavy food so after dinner we felt like walking it off a bit and perhaps stop for a drink at the Ocean Drive. We headed down to the happening strip of Miami Beach, Since it was Memorial weekend and holiday on the Monday, it was closed for traffic and the street was packed with partying people.
At first - we were quite startled by how many women were walking around with nothing but their bikinis on. Bikinis, stilettos, impressive hair and makeup. Guys on the other hand, were fully dressed. We kept walking, and the crowd got more and more tight and intense. We started noticing eventually that we were the only white people walking on Ocean Drive. There were no white people, no Asian looking, no Latin Americans (more than half of the population in Miami is of latin american heritage). The crowd consisted of purely black people. And all the pubs and clubs along the strip were playing rap music.
When you become aware of being the only white face in a big partying crowd of black people - and you're grown up in Scandinavia and do not have experience from living in Africa or on the Caribbean Islands during your life - this sudden self awareness may struck you as lightening. It certainly did for us. We all started feeling uncomfortably out of place. Many of the guys around us could all have been previous or potential basketball players - they were not little. They made Helge look like a white little lamb lost in a herd of bulls.
The crowd kept getting tighter and tighter and we started pushing our way trough the masses of people. One of us suggested perhaps it was time to head back to the car which none of us had a problem with so we turned around, forced our way out of the crowd towards a sideway, passed a few police cars and road barriers and headed back towards Joe's. We figured a drink at home would be just as good.
Back home in the flat we checked out wether some kind of special event was on because seeing only one race of people in a place like Miami Beach is kind of extraordinary. And not surprisingly - we found plenty of announcements for Black Weekend at South Beach on the internet. That explains it.
The next morning we heard on the news that 8 people were shot near Ocean Drive in the early hours, and apparently the shooter got "peppered" by the police afterwards. Kind of reliving to say that we were not there when it happened. The shooting was caught on video by some of the people that happened to be there though, and the video is out on youtube. Social media at it's full potential.
It is kind of interesting that observing dangerous animals from a close distance gives you a exiting thrill, whereas getting lost in a crowd of people you are not familiar with might be a frightening experience. It is the unfamiliar in the familiar perhaps - that freak us out. We know our own kind but yet clues about something unknown makes us insecure. We don't know what to do or how to behave. On the other hand - the deadly animals are in the category "deadly animals - be cautious" so that's easy.
The week Lena was here flew by and 1 June it was time to go home. It was great having her visiting and it made me feel like I was on holiday myself, nice break from daily Miami life. Although daily life is pretty good living, being on holiday where you live kind of gives the surroundings a fresh appearance. So thanks for that, Lena! Hope to see you here again.
