A day at the (South) Beach

We spent our second full day in the city on the southern part of Miami Beach, AKA South Beach. The locals call it the "Billion Dollar Sandbar." We called it the home of the most obnoxious hosts and hostessess you could possibly imagine.

The eastern side of Ocean Drive (the main drag just off the beach) is loaded with hotels, bars and restaurants. Most of the places have large umbellas or awnings to keep the sun out and misters blowing cool, moist air on those that walk down the sidewalk. The only charge for this? Every time you pass a business there is someone trying to hand you a menu and asking you to check out their "specials." It was the most unbelievably annoying thing you could imagine. Then again, with so many foriegners walking the streets, you could say nothing, give a quizical look and move on and they'd go right on hawking their wares to some other poor schlub. And, we agreed, it beat walking in the record breaking heat with the sun beating down on us.

We did manage to find a place that came highly recommended by the travel guide Lonley Planet (which if you're going anywhere we recommend you pick up a guide, it never steared us wrong) and Lisa was able to enjoy a gargantuan serving of snow crab legs for half off the regular price. Not too shabby. Too bad their beer special and burger weren't all that great. But hey, half off a plate of snow crab is no small feat.

It was an incredible scene as we watched people from all walks of life, all different nations taking in the SoBe (as they call it). We heard at least 10 different languages from English and Spanish (the main ones) to German, Swedish and maybe even some Arabic.

We took a ton of photos, most of them are of the buildings along the strip. We also threw in a couple of us enjoying lunch at the News Cafe (what do you want, I'm a news guy!). The food wasn't great, the service was OK and the tip was included. It would appear that Miami has taken to including a 15% gratuity on ALL of its checks. While annoying, most of the servers we encountered were friendly and effective.

Click HERE to see the gallery. I recommend watching it as a slide show (upper right corner of the page).