On a lovely Saturday morning, with bright blue sky, sunshine, temperatures in the low 70s, we visited Wakodahatchee Wetlands, a natural oasis hidden among huge condo developments. We walked along a boardwalk that looped around wetlands with amazing wildlife, lots of birds – storks,egrets, herons ducks – and spooky looking orange iguanas and green iguanas. Saw a few turtles but no alligators. Although we were told they’re around.
In downtown Delray Beach we ate at LuLu’s, a lively spot with a great streetside outdoor patio and good breakfast and lunch fare, browsed at a farmers market and a few galleries, shared some excellent frozen custard at Whits, and now here we are at the Fort Lauderdale airport, which is very quiet on a Saturday night. Heading back to Chicago and winter after a welcome respite. Thanks Aunt Shelb! 😘
Many traffic jams to, across, and from Miami which did not surprise us. First stop, a little hip oasis with shops and restaurants surrounding a huge decorated banyan tree, with a few thatched roof huts to boot, in an otherwise inner city neighborhood. It’s called Upper Buena vista. Good coffee place and Turkish restaurant.
Upper buena vista
On to Wynwood walls, a large urban art installation that seems to have spread out in every direction since we last visited seven years ago. More buildings covered in graffiti, more shops and restaurants, more South American touches. I don’t remember having to pay to see the original murals/walls, which we skipped. But so many old warehouse looking buildings and new sleek modern buildings have graffiti murals.
Smoke & DoughWynnwood walls
We drove way west for over an hour in traffic to Smoke & Dough, a bbq place that was one of only three Florida restaurants on a list in the nytimes 53 “exciting” restaurants for 2023. It turned out to be in a nondescript strip mall, which was affordable for the young entrepreneurial couple that opened the place. We tried a little of everything. Excellent – ribs, brisket, pulled pork, sausage made with a cheese, corned bread, fries, coleslaw. No weak item and the flan, with a slightly smoky taste was deliciously rich and creamy. We got a few empanadas from the “dough” part of the little restaurant to take back to aunt Shelby’s. The mushroom one was particularly good. They were also making some sort of Venezuelan (I think) bread pudding that looked interesting. I love the South American vibe in Miami!
Upper buena vista
Our last stop was the Miami beach north of south beach called Surfside. (Yes, it’s the place where there was a tragic collapse of a high rise last year that killed many people.) The beach was gorgeous. And it had a Hasidic crowd, as it turned out.
As winter weary Chicagoans, we are getting a welcome dose of sunshine, Palm trees, manicured green lawns and golf courses, blue sky, and mild temps (low 70s) here in southern Florida visiting my wonderful self-chosen aunt! Dinner was pleasant at J. Alexander’s, which was packed on Tuesday night at 6:30 p.m. Good grilled artichoke, cheeseburger, salad with crispy chicken, and key lime pie.
Dune patio
Today, we had a lovely lunch on the back patio overlooking the beach and ocean at DUNE in Fort Lauderdale – good poke salad and flat breads and sushi. Good service. I saw another side of the spring break crazy Fort Lauderdale, quiet and classy.
Atlantic Dunes State Park, Delray Beach
This evening we drove along the Oceanside highway A1A past astonishingly nouveau Spanish and Italianate mansions, chockablock, blocking the waterfront view, that looked like knockoffs of the Versace mansion in South Beach but we managed to find a Atlantic dunes state park that offered the rest of us access. We could park on the west side of the highway and then cross the highway and walk through a woods along a boardwalk to a gorgeous stretch of sandy white beach that was largely empty at dusk. The water was surprisingly warm and the waves tame, certainly compared to our last Atlantic visit in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
Dinner was fun, sitting at a high top table at Kapow! a design-heavy noodle bar with a fun, funky vibe, lots of colorful graffiti/anime graphics. The food was good inventive and traditional Asian – pad Thai, waygu beef potstickers, charred edamame in a tamari-based sauce. kapow! Its among several restaurants in Mizner Plaza, a high end outdoor shopping mall in downtown Boca Raton. A later dinner at a cozy Italian place called Dorsia was also good.
Nom Wah Tea Parlor, on tiny Doyers street in Chinatown, looks from the outside like a Wes Anderson movie set with its faded red sign with yellow letters and it did not disappoint inside either, full of old knickknacks and signs. And the dim sum was delicious. After a short wait in line outside in light drizzle at 2 pm on a Sunday, we got in and quickly got oolong tea, sautéed greens with oyster sauce (I think) scallion pancakes, shrimp and chive potstickers and pork shu mai. Delicous, hot, fresh. The place was packed but service was swift. Maybe that’s why it’s been around since 1920.
Nom WahThe swimmers on Park Avenue
For dinner, we went to a good Mediterranean/greek place called Elea on 85th street near Amsterdam. And today, after going to the Henry Taylor show at the Whitney with my dear friend Myra (Myra Monday!) we picked perhaps the most unassuming place in the meat packing district, a diner called Hectors cafe that serves breakfast all day and has a perfect tuna sandwich. And they let us hang out for hours, which was great. We walked on the high line and then across town in the 30s to Grand Central where we lingered in the basement, first at a cheerful place for smoothies and drinks then at the Oyster Bar, for some fried oysters. Good hot tea too, which is what I needed for laryngitis.
My cousin Scott showed us a great hike through the woods onto a rocky beach with a spectacular view of Shelter Island in the distance and beyond that, the North Fork of Long Island. A handful of trails begin behind the Sag Harbor golf course. The area is refreshing unspoiled by development.
First two days here are for work so had some lunch meeting dining. Good crab cakes at Row 34 (and ridiculously expensive parking – $42 for day) in Fort Point area, seaside in Boston with lots of glittering high glass and steel buildings (Including the contemporary art museum.) Flour bakery is a great lunch and coffee spot near my publisher’s office on Farnsworth.
Harvard square installation 🥲
Finn for seafood in Salem. Lunch today at Toscano in Cambridge – good pasta and thin crust pizza near Radcliffe’s Schlesinger library where I had a great morning looking at old diaries including one written on toilet paper. Single ply! Also went to an excellent craft gallery: Cambridge Artists Cooperative. And saw a sobering tribute to the people kidnapped in Israel.
There is nothing like old friends and it was a particularly wonderful treat to see old friends Art and Nell after some very trying times. On a warm fall day we wandered around several lovely towns along the coast north of Boston on Cape Ann (Gloucester/Rockport), soaking in the scenery and catching up after over two years apart.
Rockport
We started at a little coffee shop in Gloucester, which seemed a tad less touristy than Rockport, but both are on breathtaking spots on the ocean. We splurged on a lobster roll (hot, buttered) at the Fish shack in Rockport, which has big picture windows overlooking the water and walked on the big rocks that form a walkway into the water. Lots of art galleries, old Yankee monuments and wood frame shingled homes.
In Marblehead, my favorite, we walked down narrow streets lined with multi colored (powder blue, navy blue, mustard yellow, rust red, Forest green) wood shuttered and shingled homes from the 1600s to the 1800s with historic plaques telling us who lived here and there (yeoman et. Al.). Our friends found a charming inn in historic Marblehead (Harbor Light) with an outdoor veranda overlooking the small garden and pool. (They also found a good is place in Gloucester: Ocean House Hotel at Bass Rocks.
RockportRockport
Harbor Light was a Great place for an evening drink, admiring the sky and stars. The occasional flight heading to or from Logan, I gather. We had a good dinner at the popular Five Corners Kitchen in Marblehead.
We made the most of our last day in Rome by visiting the covered market in the Testaccio neighborhood, which has excellent food stands to pick up lunch and nice little boutiques to pick up last minute gifts. It was blissfully free of large tour groups and instead there were small discreet groups of foodies on tour. We had superb fried artichokes (from Foodbox) and pizza, including one pretty (and tasty) one with zucchini flowers and burrata. We wandered around the former slaughterhouse grounds near the market which still have the rusty conveyor belt-like track with big hooks. Oddly, the place is now a contemporary art museum (closed when we were there, on a Monday) and what appeared to be an art school.
Lunch
Made one last attempt to find a mother-of-the-groom outfit at the chic boutiques along Via del Pelegríno by the Campo di fiori in centro storico but no luck. Dinner was at daCesare Al casaletto, a humble looking trattoria on a residential street in the Monteverde neighborhood, an easy #8 bus ride from Trastevere. Glad we had the hotel book ahead for us (I couldn’t do online.) Very unpretentious for one of Italy and Europe’s best restaurants (according to several lists). We had the best pasta matriciana (what we’d call amatriciana ) of our trip, bucatini in a red sauce with inch-size slices of extra crispy bacon. The lamb chop, also recommended, was a disappointment, the meat gnarly and unappetizing. The service was spotty too. Our waiter kept forgetting us but the owner kindly offered us a free glass of a bubbly white wine akin to Prosecco. We didn’t try some of the restaurant’s best reviewed dishes – fried appetizers, meatballs, Cacio e pepe ( Parmesan cheese and black pepper spaghetti, a Rome dish) because we’d been there, done that elsewhere.
Testaccio
Our Rome hotel, Casa di Santa Francesca Romana continued to be a good option. The triple room we stayed in on our return to Rome (a double wasn’t available) was worth the extra money, with more space, nicer bathroom. It’s still a no frills place, with spartan decor and Catholic knickknacks everywhere but great value, location, breakfast and service. Glad I remembered to book way ahead of time. The place was packed with an international cast.
Our rule of thumb on the lazy meandering drive through Tuscany backtoRome was simple: No tour buses. If we saw buses, and we often did, we passed on by the walled city. Which meant no going to Pienza or Montepulcino but brief stops in the pretty little villages of Trequana, which has a charming checkerboard stone facade Romanesque church and one coffee bar, and Montisi, where we found a little grocery store where the women sliced us selections of their favorite local salamis, which, combined with the Siena cheese we got yesterday and a picnic table in an empty playground in another small village, made for a fine picnic.
Fuzzy photo of our routeDirck in Trequanda
Rome was crazy on a Saturday night. A total crush of humanity, many Americans. Trastevere felt overwhelming so we walked across the river where there was slightly less chaos, found a relatively quiet square with a snack bar and had beer and mediocre pizza. On the way back to our hotel, we decided to embrace the chaos (when in Rome) and stopped on the bridge to listen to an excellent funk band and then an apparently cowboy straight out of Nashville playing country blues.
Rome got overwhelming today, too many tourists (a crush of people in matching blue hats, at times), too much noise, too much trash, too many shops closed in the trendy Monti neighborhood (but hey, it was a Sunday.) Sometimes travel and the pressure to make every moment count in a magical faraway place can be too much. Not to mention so much walking.
Piazza di populi, with fabulous lion statues spitting out water into fountains
Nothing that some down time and an afternoon nap couldn’t fix. And a splurge tasting menu dinner (yes, I ate a wee bit of rabbit) in a less touristed neighborhood by the Piazza del Popolo at Mazapane, a small out of the way “it” restaurant with a rising Spanish chef. I’m glad I booked a few restaurants out of our very touristed Trastevere neighborhood, although unlike Paris there is no handy metro and we haven’t figured out the buses so we’ve taken taxis.
Two observations: we had mediocre pizza last night in a great people -watching outdoor snack bar in central storico and excellent pizza today in an awful location, in an empty back room of a pizza bar. And near the restaurant tonight we were happy to be rid of American and other tourists but the Italians were shopping at American stores (Gap, Sketchers, Lush, sephora, Nike)…nearer to the restaurant we seemed to be in a neighborhood with recent immigrants from the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
We also were impressed with the quality of the buskers, especially on the bridges in Trastevere. We met a shopkeeper today in the TESSTACIO neighborhood who is also a busker. He said buskers have to get a permit for the location where they want to play.
TakeBetsywithyou 