Miami babyyyyyyyyy.
Sam and I are very organised travelers. We plan our trips many months, even over a year in advance. That’s how to snap up flights with air miles or get the best prices when traveling at peak times. Essential when you’re trying to maximise your precious few vacation days from work.
As we always do, we booked four days off work around the long Easter weekend of April 2022. Eight days away for the price of four. When British Airways had a sale in June 2021, we bagged direct flights from London to Singapore. A 13 hour flight, £375 each round trip, with a plan to go on to Indonesia from there.
By the time February 2022 rolled around, it became apparent we were not going to Singapore or Indonesia. Besides the fact that both legs of our flights had been cancelled, Indonesia wasn’t accepting international tourists. Singapore was still quarantining full flights of people if just one person tested positive. Travelers needed PCR tests to enter, and we had had enough of dealing with this pre-travel stress when so many other destinations had dropped the PCR requirement, or even any testing at all.
Plan B
So with two months to go before departure, we started researching where we should go instead. Never has there been a trip that we spent more time finding our destination than this one. The time was booked off and we were hellbent on going somewhere. However, prices were high and just kept getting higher as the world opened up to travel. We continued to hold off in the hopes that air miles reward flights or a last minute deal would come up. We booked a one way insurance flight on points to Miami, hoping that something would come up for a return leg from somewhere in the Caribbean.
Less than two weeks before our departure to nowhere, we were sitting at a bar in East London searching air miles flight availability for the 1000th time. I was at the end of my rope researching flights for this trip. Unbeknownst to us I was also coming down with Covid at that very moment so perhaps even crankier than usual. Sam kept pushing it though, as we had to book something if we wanted to go somewhere.
Miraculously, two premium economy flights from Antigua to London came up on our desired return date. We booked immediately and finally began planning our actual trip. Friday morning flight from London to Miami, a weekend in Miami, then Monday morning from Miami to Antigua, Saturday night from Antigua to London. All booked with air miles. The long-haul flights were Virgin Atlantic which we love as well.
Where to stay for a weekend in Miami
With three distinct neighbourhoods, each worthy of a day’s exploration, Miami is an ideal destination for a long weekend. If you want beach and parties you’ll want to spend your weekend in Miami Beach. For art, breweries, and hipster industrial vibes pick Wynwood. We chose to spend our long weekend in Miami’s Little Havana. An area brimming with Cubano culture, great eateries, and fun nightlife.
Hotel options were limited a week in advance of the Easter long weekend in Miami – the hottest spring break destination in the whole of the United States. Fortunately for us the most reasonably priced option remaining also happened to be the best. We booked three nights at Life House in Little Havana.
Miami is not a city of public transport, walking, or cycling. Everything is far and wide apart and the only way to get around is by driving. As always, we opted for taxis rather than renting a car. Our first of many Lyft/Uber journeys was from the airport to the hotel and took only 15 minutes. We quickly checked in at Life House (on an iPad of course), dropped our bags, and headed straight back out for a night in Little Havana.
A weekend in Miami: First night in Little Havana
We immediately loved Little Havana. It was as though we had left the US and gone straight to Cuba. Many people didn’t speak English. The majority of cars were beaten up old pickup trucks or pimped out old Cadillacs. There were baby roosters running up and down the street. Every restaurant was Cuban and everyone knew how to have a good time.
Our first stop was Doce Provisions for a couple of beers and some great snacks ahead of our dinner reservation down the street. Don’t leave town without trying their Lechon Asado Buns.
Dinner and drinks at Cafe La Trova
Cafe La Trova is a fun and lively Cubano bar and restaurant with live bands playing. The cocktails and food are great but the bar itself is even better. The whole experience is more than the sum of its parts. We ate a delicious and muy generoso portion of ceviche whilst listening to the soundtrack to Narcos. We wanted to keep going but we were jetlagged and given it was 4am London time we walked back to the hotel unfashionably early.
I was desperate for sleep but as we walked up to Life House, it was pretty obvious their rooftop bar – Terras – was kicking off. We fought the jetlag and had a couple of beers overlooking at the Miami skyline at the hotel bar. This bar is a worthy destination in itself, but so much better that after these drinks we could go crash in our beautiful room.
A weekend in Miami: A morning in Little Havana
After a reasonably early night we were up and ready to hit the road by 8am. This was too early for Little Havana. We wandered towards a fruit stand that was supposed to open at 8am. There were no signs of life at ten minutes past. The plan was to walk down Little Havana’s main street – SW 8th Street, or Calle Ocho as it’s referred to by locals. There are two sandwich places next door to each other and we planned to eventually visit both, stopping for some cafecitos along the way. With everything else closed we wound up straight at sandwich place #1 – El Rey De Las Fritas by 8:30am. We were grateful something was open.
Breakfast #1 at El Rey De Las Fritas
We sat down at the retro bar counter and ordered our inaugural cafecitos to go with our famous fritas sandwiches. A cafecito is a cuban espresso prepared with LOTS of sugar. They are addictive and perfect to fuel neighbourhood explorations. The sandwiches consisted of a spiced beef patty and shoe string fried onions. I ordered mine with an egg. Sam had his with egg and cheese. We each had a dousing of Louisiana hot sauce.
The plan was to go to Sanguich next door, but it was still too early so we backtracked to the famous Calle Ocho coffee bar, La Colada Gourmet, for another cafecito. Even this was closed, so we grabbed a cafecito at a restaurant across the street before heading back to Sanguich.
Breakfast #2 at Sanguich
I was excited for Sanguich for many reasons, the main one being my love of sandwiches. They are the perfect meal in one, and any place that specialises in sandwiches will get a double take from me. What better place could we possibly get our cubanos? We opted to share one having just eaten a whole fritas each. It was still gigantic. We sat at the bar, sipping Cigar City pale ales, and watched the artists at work turning over piles of sanguiches. Ours was delicious.
A weekend in Miami: An afternoon in Wynwood
We hopped in a Lyft to Wynwood. This was another neighbourhood we considered staying in, but we definitely got it right with Little Havana. Wynwood is an industrial neighbourhood turned hipster dream. It is famous for its graffiti murals – known as the Wynwood Walls – and for housing many breweries. We had our day carved out for us.
It took half an hour to walk from one end of Wynwood to the other, then we stopped for a coffee and a cinnamon twist at The Salty Donut.
We had one more cafecito at Suite Habana Cafe – a great little speciality coffee shop – before heading to the breweries.
Wynwood brewery taproom crawl
Our first brewery was Veza Sur, which had a nice outdoor space and decent beers. We opted for a couple of chopps (a small glass of lager) to kick off the day.
Next we went to the Dogfish Head taproom. Dogfish Head beers arrived in the UK in the early days of craft brewing, but drinking their famous 90 Minute IPA as fresh as we did at their taproom was a completely different experience. It’s easy to get sucked into trying the latest thing in the craft beer world, but that beer will rarely compete with one like this with 20 years of refinements. We had fun sitting at the bar, and ordered a tasting set after our pints of IPA.
Next we went to Wynwood Brewing. We had seen their beers at the restaurants and bars the night before – in particular their Laces IPA.
We were very excited for our next stop: J. Wakefield Brewing. This was a bit of a geeky brewery, yet somehow we didn’t get any photos of the beers. Maybe because we were too distracted by a) the mural of Frank from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia on the garbage can outside, and b) the ridiculous brisket sandwich we had from their resident foodtruck Apocalypse BBQ. We really didn’t need to share a sandwich at 3:40pm after all of the food we had already eaten, but it was truly delicious.
Tacos and cocktails
We took a break from the brewery tour and went to foodhall space 1-800-LUCKY for a drink. The space was cool and the food looked great, but we really couldn’t eat any more at this point. Fast forward 30 minutes though, and we standing in line at Coyo Taco for tacos and margaritas. I’m glad we waited. These really were the best tacos and the prices were silly good. Be sure to get there before you’re hungry, as there is always a line.
Next we went to Beaker & Gray for happy hour (5pm to 7pm) beer and cocktails.
Irresistible Little Havana
We had planned to spend our whole evening in Wynwood, but after these drinks we realised that we missed the vibey fun of Little Havana. We got in an Uber to Union Beer back on Calle Ocho. This is a great dive style bar with an even better beer list. It is a must visit in Little Havana.
We split a meal at El Pub Restaurant, where we clearly thought the large painted roosters were more important than the food itself, and headed to Ball & Chain for some live music and cocktails. It was loud and we were jetlagged. We wound up walking back to Life House and I’m pretty sure we were asleep by 10pm. Clearly we hadn’t learnt our lesson from this very morning.
So, the next morning, we were again up too early for Little Havana. I went for a run and Sam went to the gym, and at 8:30am we walked to a 24 hour Nicaraguan fritanga, Pinolandia, for breakfast. It seemed like a ridiculous meal to have for breakfast, but the restaurant was consistently busy from the minute we arrived to the minute we left. We could have easily split one of these boxes of steak, plantain, cheese, and fried rice, but we got one each and wound up throwing a lot of the rice away. I think it was $28 for two boxes.
A weekend in Miami: Day 3, Miami Beach
Today was the Miami Beach day of our weekend. We had considered staying here, but given we were going to Antigua the next day, we ruled the beach out and opted for more culture in Little Havana. Nevertheless we wanted to spend a day there. We got an Uber to the north end of Miami Beach and walked the boardwalk heading downtown.
The north end of the beach was exclusively big hotels. There were no bars or restaurants that weren’t located within a hotel. It wasn’t really our scene. The beach itself had white sand and was big and beautiful.
Downtown was more interesting, and the main street was full of the outdoor patios of bars and restaurants. We hung a right and took a walk down the famous Lincoln Road, a pedestrianised strip full of shops and stalls and more al fresco options.
We walked all the way down and stopped for a taco snack and Modelo at Bodega Taqueria y Tequila. It was a fun place, but the tacos paled in comparison to the ones we had the night before.
Lunch at Yardbird
We didn’t want to eat too much anyway, because we had lunch booked at Yardbird Southern Table & Bar. We had seen this restaurant on the Miami episode of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown. On checking their website we saw you could buy a gift certificate for 20% off, so we purchased $100 of dining credit for $80 and made a booking.
This was the first ‘proper’ restaurant we had been to on the trip. Everything else had been a very casual affair or a bar. It was a truly excellent experience, the service was next level and we had a great time. We had two cocktails each, including one each of their house cocktail, and split a serving of fried chicken and mac and cheese.
We headed back towards the beach via Espanola Way, another famous pedestrianised street. Small and historic, this area had more of a boutique-euro vibe than Lincoln Road.
We continued walking towards the beach and passed La Sandwicherie. It looked amazing but we carried on because we’d eaten so much already. It did look like a great stop and I made a mental note to go back later (we didn’t).
Miami Beach Bars
Instead we went to Mac’s Club Deuce – the oldest bar in Miami. Happy Hour: 8am to 5pm. Also on the same episode of Parts Unknown this was our favourite bar of the trip. We could have easily spent the whole beautiful sunny weekend afternoon drinking cans of PBR in this dark and dingy bar, where somehow smoking was still permitted. We had our first beer at the winding bar and our next whilst playing pool. The bartender was hilarious and suited the bar to a tee.
I had assumed Miami Beach would be packed on the weekend, but up until this point it had been relatively quiet. Turns out everyone was on the strip of beach bars on Lummus Park, drinking novelty sized cocktails and watching drag fashion shows. This was the party we were expecting.
We got happy hour cocktails (off this strip) at The Scape Goat. Again, we had planned to spend our evening in Miami Beach, but we couldn’t resist going back to Calle Ocho to spend the last night in of our Miami weekend in Little Havana.
We got an Uber to La Colada Gourmet for that famous cafecito that we missed the previous morning. The guy running the shop suggested we get it with “a shot” of rum, which in fact wound up being a glass of rum with a splash of coffee.
A final night in Little Havana
We went back to Union Bar for a beer, then walked 30 minutes to Taqueria Dia Mexico. They were closing early and turned us away. We wound up having dinner at Mi Rinconcito Mexicano instead, as the only foreigners in a truely local Little Havana restaurant.
Finally, we headed back to old faithful La Trova for a drink at the bar to watch live music.
Miami was a great weekend stop-off on our way to Antigua and such a fun place to spend a couple of days. I am so glad we ended up staying in Little Havana and at Life House in particular. It really was the perfect place to start and end our day. I am not sure if we did the city justice. Normally we would spend more time researching where to go and what to do, but I had Covid brain in the lead up to going and we were still scrambling to figure out all of our last minute plans. We will happily return to Miami en route to the Caribbean or South America again.
