Miami Carnival Weekend

We went to Miami the first weekend in October for Miami Carnival. These are photos of the view from the hotel room. (I really should start keeping track of which hotel these views from a hotel room are taken from.)

The entire reason for going was to attend all the Miami Carnival functions. We arrived Thursday night. There was some show going on in some arena, but due to the fact that I'm getting older and can't handle going out late at night after working all day, then driving for 5 hours, I opted out of that event. The next night was the White Party, which has been previously been held at the Deauville on Miami Beach. This year it was at a hall out by some medical center that the cab driver had never heard of and couldn't find despite an address and a map. Then, the performers didn't start performing until about 3:30 a.m. We arrived around midnight expecting that the show would start about 1 or 2, based on previous experience. But no, nothing until 3:30 in the morning. And the first performer left a lot to be desired. We finally gave up about 4 in the morning and headed back to the hotel.

Saturday night was another set of performances with food and drink booths. This is usually held at the FIU Campus (the one with the hospitality school). But, no, not this year. This year they moved it to a race course. And as one of my brothers-in-law pointed out, I shouldn't even have expected decent food since the venue was a race course. But despite the fact that the food was merely ok when it was even available, the music was good. And it was a first for me, I've never been to an outdoor concert in the rain.

The final Carnival activity was to be a parade on Sunday. But we decided against going. First of all, there were two parades -- one in Broward County, one in Miami-Dade County. At the same time on the same day. And the fliers for both events listed the same performers. We figured that even though time works differently in Miami than in other parts of the world, the performers we wanted to see would be at the other parade (one of the laws of my world). And it turns out that there was a shooting at one of the events. So we were very pleased that we'd decided that instead of going to the parade, that we'd take a nice long walk along the boardwalk and have dinner in Miami Beach.