Mega-Miami
Trip Start
Feb 03, 2009
1
10
33
Trip End
Mar 23, 2009
Miami Beach, Florida, United States
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
We attended three of the five Boat Shows days taking time off on the weekend to take advantage of the record sunny and 80+ degree weather and enjoy Haulover Beach (lots of Quebecois there). I didn't realize until I got here that there are actually two boat shows going on simultaneously - the Miami Boat Show and the Brokerage and Yacht Show. Our hotel was perfectly located a block away from the shuttles that took you everywhere for the shows.
I have never seen so much boating equipment and so many mega-yachts in one place. The most expensive one I saw and it was by no means the largest was $US14.5 million. One very special treat was an opportunity to sea-trial a Beneteau Swift Trawler 42 - one of the boats we liked best. We took her out the cruise ship channel and into the Atlantic under the supervision of a couple of captains who were moving the Beneteau trawlers that day. We also got to see the Meridian 411 that we first saw in Montebello last summer and again in Georgian Bay. We loved the exterior looks of this boat but had never seen her interior until we got here. And we saw an Oyster - one of the classic sailboats we'd seen and loved during our Caribbean sabbatical. The electronics are also out of this world. (We've really benefited from our Garmin navigation system in the car too!!)
We've walked South Beach, lunched in Joe's Stone Crab restaurant, visited the Vizcaya museum and gardens (one of the 1000 places to see before you die), suppered in Versailles - the best Cuban restaurant in Little Havana and generally been blown away by the mega- everything - cars (Bentleys, Rolls, Jags, BMWs, Ferrari's, Maseratis etc), condo and apartment towers, mansions (priced in the millions), traffic jams, people etc. Richard tried to golf Biltmore but the mega- green fees dissuaded him.
