Travel Blog

Friday morning friends from Boca - Don and Joanne - showed up at our door, Don uncharacteristically but appropriately in a guayabera. We headed south on 95 for my Miami tour.

I drove them past Jose Marti Park, the Miami River Inn, the broken ground of the still disputed Marlins stadium, then up to Calle Ocho where we stretched our legs in two tobacco shops - one small and homey, the other spacious and elegant - checked the movies at the Tower Theater, and then took a spin through Dominoes Park.

For lunch at Versailles I ordered ceviche for the first time, which came with plantain chips and was delicious. Outside, a group of men were collecting signatures on a petition protesting the upcoming Havana concert of Juanes. One woman had written, urging the Colombian singer to stay away: "Everything in Cuba is politicized."

Leaving, Don remarked on the fact that he - with the surname of Dickerson - was the only man wearing a guayabera. I suggested that it is more of a casual shirt, and that most of the men - with the exception of the protesters - were heading back to work.

From there it was a short drive into Coral Gables - Books & Books, the Biltmore Hotel, the Venetian Pool (pocked by rain) - and then over to Coconut Grove, where three peacocks strolled one of the residential streets.

Up through downtown, across the MacArthur Causeway, and into the Delano and Raleigh hotels, before ending up at the Van Dyke Cafe on Lincoln Road, where we were served mojitos by a courtly waiter from Krakow. Eschewing the usual game of counting the women who could be models, Don pointed out the people who couldn't get jobs.

"Unemployable," he said confidently, as a young man walked by with most of his boxer shorts showing. Quite possibly, I thought, but an excellent candidate for a guayabera.