Bienvenido a Miami - February, 28, 2017

Everyone always thinks that business travel is all champagne and caviar. This was one of those trips that had all of the right things leading up to it but boy did things turn and take the glamour out of glamorous. I had grand plans of flying down to South Beach for the day and taking one of my clients out for lunch at some fancy restaurant overlooking the ocean (I had Le Mar at the Mandarin Oriental already picked out) and after my lunch meeting was going to spend a couple of hours catching up on work from a Starbucks overlooking the ocean and exploring some of the new hotels that had recently opened in downtown Miami. Yes I get excited about seeing new hotels. And in my mind, I had a great day planned.

But instead I got picked up by my client and taken about a mile from the airport to a Regus Office Park where you could rent meeting rooms by the hour. We met for about two hours and than got excited when the topic of lunch came up. I let the client choose after throwing out some restaurants I had recently ready about...and they ended up picking a make your own salad joint (I forget the name) in a strip mall. I am all about experiencing the destination but this one got a bit too close to home in that we enjoyed a nice al fresco lunch on the patio overlooking a parking lot complete with a car up on blocks and a cop busting a perp for meth. Given the ambiance, it was a great lunch and this place made a great salad. After lunch I was returned to the airport where I still had 5 hours until my flight left. Needless to say I got my steps in that day as I looked for ways to kill time between answering emails. I think I covered every square inch of the airport that day.

I have been traveling to Miami for years and have watched this airport get expanded and renovated over the years, but this airport really has a lot to see and do. I still remember Michael Feldman and I running through the airport (sweating our behinds off) in the heat of summer to catch quick turn flights so we could make it to our destination in the Caribbean (usually Aruba or Curacao or Key West). Thankfully they have also enhanced their amenities to keep visitors entertained and now when you get stuck there you aren’t cursing every 5 mins under your breath.

Some of the cool things that MIA has implemented lately are Casey a 69-lbs Golden Retriever that strolls through the airport two days a week visiting with guests and kids. There are art installations throughout the entire airport so make sure you are always looking up, down, left and right. But what I always love about visiting MIA are my trips to Café La Carreta and Café Versailles where I can get my cortaditos (a potent Cuban coffee mixed with lots and lots of sugar) and my empanadas. No matter what you get from either of these restaurants it is always delicious.

So while this trip wasn’t exactly what I was planning for, it definitely fit the bill of being able to experience something new and something that I will probably never do again.