Miami

The cool art deco clock in South Beach
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On to Miami….  We spent some time walking through South Beach to look at the art deco buildings and Little Havana where we ate Cuban sandwiches.  We also drove through Coconut Grove to see some ridiculous houses and banyan trees, which are some of the coolest trees we’ve seen; and we’ve seen a lot of trees.

Seeing the Marlins play was perhaps the most depressing big league experience this side of Montreal.  They play in ginormous Dolphin Stadium and there’s no hiding the fact that it’s a football stadium completely unsuited to baseball.  (Side note: did you know that “ginormous” is now in the Merriam Webster dictionary?)  There were probably a whopping 1500 fans in 47,662 seats…they don’t even sell tickets in the upper deck.  On the plus side we were practically celebrities after we held up our homemade poster reading “4 months, 30 parks, 2 sisters.”  Park security guys talked to us from down on the field and gave us some Marlins programs and a practice baseball, and after the game random people wished us good luck for the rest of the trip.  That combined with the great front row seats we got from a scalper at half price made it a success despite the poor attendance and lousy stadium.