“Here I am in the place where I come let go – Miami“. This is the beginning of the Will Smith’s song, “Miami”, and this is the new stop of the USA East Coast Road Trip: the wonderful Miami, the capital of Florida, one of my top travel destinations and best seaside places for sure.
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These song lyrics were in my mind so I was curious to discover this city: for sure it could have been a great place to visit or a great disappointment. For sure it was not a disappointment, but a city that I loved!
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The city is really multicultural and multiform with different districts that make Miami like an agglomerate of different cities. This was something that impressed me much and for this reason I will start writing about its districts.
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The first one is Miami Little Havana, whose most representative street is the 8th Street, best known as Calle Ocho.
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It’s not difficult to understand where the people of this district come from, mostly from Cuba, and clearly the language mostly spoken, also beyond Little Havana, is Spanish from Central America and Carribbean area, and sometimes the Spanglish.
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The first place where we have been is the incredible El Palacio de Jugos, in W Flager Street, literally the Palace of Juices.
It’s a place where you can buy tropical fruit and Caribbean specialties: I strongly recommend you to drink some tropical fruit juices for 2,5$ each one.
 and also typical sweets like dulce de leche, literally the “milk sweet”.
You can also eat there or take away your food. Be careful if you order this course, with an entire chicken, rice and potatoes, for just 10$. You won’t finish it! 🙂
From the Palacio de los Jugos you can reach easily Calle Ocho, the heart of Miami Little Havana. It’s nice as this street is plenty or murals like these ones
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This eclectic place displays also this art and research center bar, CubaOcho.
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Not far from it, you can also find a cigar shop, the Little Havana Cigar Factory: why don’t buy some of the famous Cuban cigars?
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Finally, the last place visited was the Maximo Gomez Park, where the local people play domino ( in fact it’s called domino club) and smoke the Cuban cigars of course!
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Next stop of the USA East Coast Road Trip: the European and rich district of Coral Gables and the Downtown: two different faces of Miami.
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If you want to see the full itinerary of Miami including these places in a map, click here.
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May I post this on my site, http://www.travelwithlisaonline.com? You would be the newest guest journalist.
Hi Lisa, nice to meet you! Yes, you can: I will be glad to be your newest guest journalist. You will also place a link to my blog? Let me know if you need something else, like a short bio, ok? :-)Marco
I just recently to Kauai from South Florida. I loved Little Havana and Calle Ocho. It's a great place for a medianoche, tostones, cafe, pasteles de guava, and the best ice cream. You can find my post: http://www.mstravelingpants.travel/north-american/tour-little-havana-miami-for-a-taste-of-cuba/
Hi Heidi, thanks for your comment and nice to meet you! 🙂 I agree with you…I loved this district and I hope to come back soon there, even if I live in Europe lol! 🙂 I like your post, especially the courses I could not taste there because of lack of time…