There’s only so much relaxing someone can do (is that true?) so after a couple of days lounging out by the pool, we decided to visit somewhere we hadn’t been before – the mainland!  We decided we’d start at Brickell City Centre, then jump on the Metromover and take it from there.

My not-so-subtle plan of visiting another Sephora worked!

I can’t say I’d recommend visiting Brickell – I’m sure we didn’t visit  everything it had to offer, but it seemed to be just a lot of high rise buildings and traffic.  City Centre did have some great views (like the one at the top of this post) and it was nice to spend an hour or so there, but I didn’t really see anything that would tempt me back.

We had a really nice coffee at Pasion del Cielo – you get to choose your beans, very hipster! – I dropped another ton of cash at Sephora, and then we got on the Metromover.

I found the weird monorail really… well, weird!  It was free for one thing which is astonishing for a city, but because we hadn’t done any kind of research, we didn’t really know where we were going so it all felt quite random.  We got off at the romantically named Riverwalk but we soon worried that we were going to be murdered down there so got straight back on.  This was not an attractive river walk.

I don’t really remember where we got off the Mover next (it smelt strongly of urine – that’s all I can recall) but we wandered around Downtown Miami for a bit before getting back on the Mover and riding all the way to the end of the line (School Board).  It was fun to watch the city go by – the Freedom Tower, the big arena, the very striking museums.  Everything looked very busy – lots of families and tourists.

I didn’t really see the appeal of Downtown Miami either, but perhaps we missed the good bits here too.  I’m sure there were some hidden away.

Mum had another moment of fearing for her safety as we walked from School Board to Wynwood (we did stand out a little amongst the cemetery and cement factories) and I don’t think she was that impressed with “a bunch of graffitied buildings” but I’m really pleased we got to see a small bit of Wynwood.  It was packed full of people so impossible to get good photos, and a little bit impossible to walk around comfortably but it was a hot Sunday afternoon so everyone was taking the opportunity to explore.

Wynwood has been on our to do list for a while, but we could never summon enough energy to trek onto the mainland.  There really are some beautiful murals all over the area, not just at “the Walls” and you just trip over art on every street corner.

When the crowds got a little too much and as it started to rain, we grabbed an Uber back to the hotel.  After a 4 hour wander around the mainland, we had to get refreshed for our evening down at South Beach.