7: bakery bake-off, coppertone, the slab, holocaust memorial, pretty bright rocks, sidewalk, sand

March 24, 2025

Miami to Miami Beach

For breakfast I Ubered over to the Caracas Bakery, which is listed in the New York Times as one of the top 22 bakeries in the country. I was a little surprised to find that it wasn't packed, but maybe it's because this is Monday morning.

It was just okay, and I don't think I'd put it in the top 22.

It might've had a bit more almond paste than I prefer.

After finishing breakfast I thought I'd go for a walk instead of heading straight back to the hotel, and within ninety seconds I came upon the Maman Bakery.

The name rang a bell, so I texted Pauline and Dorian, my new French friends from the boat in Key West, to ask: "Was Maman the name of the place Dorian recommended?" Yes, but not THIS one, which may have different management, so no guarantees on the quality.

I figured that since I'd walked almost two minutes to get here I'd probably burned off more than the 2000 calories from the croissant and mocha, and therefore deserved to have another one, so I sat down for Second Breakfast.

This restaurant is definitely under a different management than the other one that Dorian recommended because the croissant was soggy, more so than any I'd ever eaten, and I'm positive that if someone from France is going to give you advice about a pastry, it's going to be very good advice.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do everything I wanted to do in Miami. The Church of St. Bernard of Clairvaux was a little too far out of the way.

The church, which everyone calls the Ancient Spanish Monastery was built in 1141, and is almost 800 years older than Miami itself. In 1925, William Randolph Hearst purchased the monastery and shipped it to Miami where it was rebuilt in 1964. I won't say much about it in this blog, but I do recommend reading a little about it by clicking here.

Another first, besides the Key Lime Pie and the Whopper: Miami is the place where the first sunscreen in the US was invented. In the 1940s, Benjamin Green, a pharmacist, worked in the kitchen of his Miami residence to create a lotion for WWII soldiers stationed in the South Pacific. The red petroleum gel would eventually evolve into the now-famous sunscreen, Coppertone. The timing was perfect because I just ran out of the bottle I was using.

I've been working very hard not to get a suntan. It's very difficult.

I got slathered up and started riding. My first stop of the day took me through downtown Miami. I had some trouble with the directions, and if you zoom in on the map at the bottom you'll see I went all over the place, including gravel back alleys like this.

Eventually I was finally able to find what I was looking for: a slab of the Berlin Wall.

The graffiti in this city has been impressive, and in this case I wondered how they were able to paint the side of a building.

A poor shot, but the architecture is beautiful

Saying goodbye to Miami. As I looked at the skyscrapers, I remembered from my reading that buildings over 500 feet in height have to be able to withstand 200-mph winds to meet the building code. That's quite an engineering feat.

crossing the bridge from Miami to Miami Beach

Three more detours before I made it the 10 miles to my hotel.

This isn't a great picture, but you're looking at Star Island, where the average cost of a house is more than $40 million. Some of the people who live there include Gloria Estefan, Sean "Diddy" Combs (although he may be selling his to pay for lawyers), Rosie O'Donnell, Shaquille O’Neal, Lenny Kravitz, Jennifer Lopez, and Phillip Frost.

My next stop is the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach. This grim, somber, and quite memorable sculpture was created by Kenneth Treister.

After rolling my bike inside I locked the SteerStopper and the "click" sounded like a gunshot, creating a resounding echo that bounced off the walls several times. Only then did I realize how quiet it was, right there in the middle of Miami Beach.

the surrounding walls are engraved with the names of the victims

It reminds me of a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

"Then in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart." Anne Frank

It's hard to look at something like that, and also important to look at it.

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Where shall we go next? Anything after that seems... diminished. I climbed on my bike and rolled a mile or so down the road and found my next Point of Interest: how about some pretty, colored rocks?

This totem, entitled Miami Mountain, was created by Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone and is constructed of giant limestone boulders, each weighing 40 tons.

The five boulders, each painted a different day-glo color, are stacked 41 feet high. Everything here is green, so they really stand out.

I gave it a valiant effort, but no Warm Showers hosts responded, and there aren't any campsites in this urban area, so I got another hotel. I walked past it because its entrance is the same as the restaurant.

The back of this door doesn't just list Emergency Exits.

This took a while... finding all of the employees and apologizing to them. Really, though, I don't know why I'M required to apologize. I'M not the one who broke it.

After I got checked in I ate lunch at the hotel's restaurant, then walked over to the beach. On the way:

"The Betsy Orb" is an egg-shaped third-floor skybridge that links two hotels across a back alley.

The original impetus was in trying to solve a hotelier problem: how to expand a pricey Ocean Drive hotel (The Betsy, built in 1941) by connecting it to a less pricey Collins Avenue hotel (The Carlton, built in 1937) without upsetting the clientele.

The architect, Allan Shulman, told the Miami Herald that, "A plain bridge seemed inadequate," so in 2016 he wrapped the passageway in rounded fiberglass panels made for radomes, the enclosures that protect spinning radar antennae. The result: The Egg. It's not only quirky, it also disguises its purpose to the paying customers. From the inside, it looks like just another hotel hallway.

The beaches here in Miami Beach are quite expansive, covering miles and miles. Interestingly, Miami Beach sand doesn't occur naturally in this area. Most of the sand was imported from the Bahamas or other beaches in the Caribbean. The state of Florida spent $11.5 million importing sand to restore the shoreline in Miami Beach that continues to be eroded by the ocean waves.

Again, this just LOOKs like ocean water.

What you'e looking at is The Neptune Memorial Reef, the world's first underwater cemetery and largest man-made reef. It's a little over three miles out (still visible from the shore, though) and was designed as an artistic interpretation of the Lost City of Atlantis. It's main purpose is to serve as a "resting place for cremated remains" and is so popular that it grew from half an acre to a full acre.

Customers’ cremains are mixed with water and turned into “placements” at the reef, which have been affixed with several other concrete structures. These serve as reef bulwarks so that coral grows, replacing some that's been lost from human activity.

I didn't go there because I'm not dead, and because I can't scuba.

Here you're looking at Stiltsville. Although there were 27 at its peak, it's now comprised of 6 structures in the shallow waters just over 3 miles out, visible from shore (but not in this picture). A man named Eddie Walker started Stiltsville back in the 1920s and 1930s during Prohibition. Back then, most of the buildings were just shacks which served as places where people could gamble and drink in order to avoid getting arrested. Between fires, hurricanes, and lots and lots of partying there are now only seven buildings left after 1992's Hurricane Andrew. All of them are owned by the National Park Service, and you can get there by boat, but if you want to dock and visit you have to get a permit from the Stiltsville Trust.

I didn't go because I don't have a boat, and I don't have a permit, but I have a camera.

My camera isn't good enough to take these pictures... I borrowed them.

The next thing I wanted to see while here is this corner. Miami Beach's Ocean drive was, in the 1970s, decaying. The rows of Art Deco hotels were abandoned and neglected, and it had become a rundown, crime-ridden retirement community on the verge of economic collapse.

When Lenny Horowitz moved here from New York City, he and Barbara Baer Capitman, as a result of their love of Art Deco, founded the Miami Design Preservation League.

At the time, all of the Art Deco buildings were white, but Lenny (a designer by trade) developed a palette of pastel colors to accentuate their design. He pressed others to use his pastels, and his color scheme became pervasive in the community. This led to South Beach being recognized as a "pastel paradise" where TV series such as Miami Vice would be filmed.

Horowitz died from AIDS complications at 43 and, in 2009, the Palace Bar began painting a rainbow crosswalk at this corner to mark it as a safe space. The city later agreed to make it a permanent landmark to honor the impact the LGBTQ+ community, and specifically Lenny, made on Miami Beach.

The crosswalk is made from terrazzo pavers in a familiar Art Deco pattern with colors designed to emit a faint glow at night. However, instead of the traditional colors of the Pride flag rainbow, these colors were chosen from Horowitz's pastel palette. This, in order to remind the onlooker of the impact Lenny made on the South Beach culture. It's interesting to note that Miami Beach has the largest collection of art deco architecture in the world.

I had a scoop of ice cream from Redhead and while I was sitting next to the weird-looking plastic man on the far right, this guy pulled up and parked. I got a picture from both sides, and this picture looked better.

It was time to head back to the hotel so I started the short trek. On the way I spotted this guy. You can't tell in the picture, but he's BRIGHT green.

My sink stopper won't work here so I guess I can't wash laundry today. No worries. I can wait until tomorrow, especially since I brought so many clothes for several days.

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Today's ride: 11 miles (18 km)
Total: 186 miles (299 km)

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