We woke up later and the weather still wasn’t fully
cooperative. It was very windy and cloudy apparently due to a tropical
depression hanging around the area. Still we had to basically get ready because
we were going to drive to the Sandals home office where we would meet with
Silvio and Arlenes who were reps from Sandals we met on the trip to
Jamaica. They offered to take us out to
lunch for Cuban food one of our days in Miami. We got ready and then Daniela
had to do some work so we basically had breakfast of sorts and then I killed
time until it was time to go.
We got the car from the valet and the drive was probably
about 50 minutes to just beyond the airport a bit to the south. There was of
course traffic but we made it unscathed.
The office was a little difficult to find but we were able to get there.
They do not have enough parking spaces for the companies that work in that
location it is quite obvious. We got
inside and Silvio took us to a conference room and we chatted about different
things until Arlenes was done with her phone meeting. She joined us and Silvio
drove us to La Carreta which is a famous Cuban restaurant a few minutes away
from their office.
La Carreta has about 5 locations Silvio said. The staff all
spoke Spanish as a first language. I had the ropa vieja and Daniela had
something called vaca frita de pollo which if translated literally means fried
cow of chicken. It means that it was a
shredded chicken dish done in the way of a shredded beef dish that is popular
for Cubans. I had mine with black beans
and rice. The food was excellent. Silvio
and Alrenes both immigrated from Cuba to the US some years back. They explained
a little bit of their thoughts on the island and the potential for it to open
back up. It sounds like it is opening but still there is a long way to go. They
believe it will happen though because it will benefit everyone. They explained a bit about working as a
travel agent in the US to Daniela and gave her some ideas and some contacts.
They were very nice and very helpful too. We tried to pay but they wouldn’t let
us.
After we finished lunch we got back in the car and drove to
the malls near the airport. There was
the Dolphin Mall and the International Mall. The Dolphin Mall was definitely
the better of the two and much larger. Daniela sends a lot of passengers there
so she wished to make sure she knew more about them. After that we headed back to the hotel.
We again had a bit of traffic but not as bad as say the day
we got into Miami. We got in and got
cleaned up and changed and then went down to the hotel restaurant, which is
Kitchen 305 (the area code of the region).
It was all you can eat lobster night which meant it was very crowded and
busy but neither of us wanted lobster. The initial step of getting seated was
quick but it took a long time for a server to visit us. They also took a while
to get us drinks and food. I had a beer and Daniela had white sangria. I had a
grilled swordfish dish with polenta and Daniela had a whole fish fried snapper. Both fish were fresh but overcooked and hers
was on the dryish side. I didn’t care for the fact the fish was dropped right
on the polenta for me because it didn’t allow for the separation of
flavors. It took a long time get served
through every step and it was very noisy in there. The good news was that we had the $100 credit
from our time served with the sales pitch so it didn’t really cost us any
money. I would advise don’t go to this place on one of their all you can eat nights
unless you are going for that promotion.
Daniela wanted to go dancing so we took the bus to South
Beach which was $2 per person and maybe about half an hour for as long as we
went. We then walked around the South Beach area along Ocean Boulevard and
Collins Avenue. We looked at all the restaurants
and found that there were a couple of clubs and mostly restaurants. I got the
impression from other people it was mostly clubs and only couple restaurants
but it didn’t seem that way to us. The most famous club is Mango’s but when we
got to it Daniela didn’t seem to like it so we ended up walking down to mostly
the end then turning back and getting a drink at one of the restaurants to take
a rest because it was a lot of walking and basically very close to midnight at
that point.
When we finished we decided to take a taxi back to the room
and call it a night because it was very close to too late for the bus and we
didn’t know where to get a stop.
No comments:
Post a Comment