The Adonia

3 May 2016 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Cruise Ships Reading Time:  6 minutes

Adonia in Split © Ivan T./cc-by-sa-3.0

Adonia in Split © Ivan T./cc-by-sa-3.0

MV Adonia is a cruise ship which is the sole vessel of the Fathom fleet, a new brand of Carnival Corporation & plc. The ship was built by Chantiers de l’Atlantique at their shipyard in St. Nazaire, France. Adonia is a twin sister ship of the Pacific Princess (which is the smallest ship of Princess Cruises), four sister ships are operated by Oceania Cruises and two sister ships are operated by Azamara Club Cruises.   read more…

Theme Week Miami – Little Havana

20 April 2016 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Miami / South Florida Reading Time:  7 minutes

Cuban Memorial Plaza © Marc Averette

Cuban Memorial Plaza © Marc Averette

Little Havana (Spanish: La Pequeña Habana) is a neighborhood of Miami in Florida. Home to many Cuban immigrant residents, as well as many residents from Central and South America, Little Havana is named after Havana, the capital and largest city in Cuba. Little Havana is noted as a center of social, cultural, and political activity in Miami. Its festivals, including the Calle Ocho Festival, Viernes Culturales/Cultural Fridays, the Three Kings Parade and others, have been televised to millions of people every year on different continents. It is also known for its landmarks, including Calle Ocho (SW 8th Street/Tamiami Trail), and its Walk of Fame (for famous artists and Latin personalities, including Celia Cruz, Willy Chirino, and Gloria Estefan), the Cuban Memorial Boulevard, Plaza de la Cubanidad, Domino Park, the Tower Theater, Jose Marti Park, the Firestone/Walgreens Building, St. John Bosco Catholic Church, Municipio de Santiago de Cuba and others. Little Havana is the best known neighborhood for Cuban exiles in the world. It is characterized by its street life, with restaurants, music and other cultural activities, mom and pop enterprises, political passion, and great warmth amongst its residents.   read more…

The Everglades National Park in Florida

19 February 2016 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Miami / South Florida, Museums, Exhibitions, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks, Environment, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  7 minutes

Everglades National Park World heritage plaque © Daniel Schwen/cc-by-sa-4.0

Everglades National Park World heritage plaque © Daniel Schwen/cc-by-sa-4.0

Everglades National Park is a U.S. National Park in Florida that protects the southern 20 percent of the original Everglades. In the United States, it is the largest tropical wilderness, the largest wilderness of any kind east of the Mississippi River, and is visited on average by one million people each year. It is the third-largest national park in the lower 48 states after Death Valley and Yellowstone. It has been declared an International Biosphere Reserve, a World Heritage Site, and a Wetland of International Importance, one of only three locations in the world to appear on all three lists.   read more…

Greater Downtown Miami

12 February 2016 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Miami / South Florida Reading Time:  13 minutes

Downtown Miami as seen from South Beach © Marc Averette/cc-by-3.0

Downtown Miami as seen from South Beach © Marc Averette/cc-by-3.0

Downtown Miami is an urban residential neighborhood, which is based around the Central Business District of Miami. Brickell Avenue and Biscayne Boulevard are the main north-south roads, and Flagler Street is the main east-west road. The neighborhood is defined by the Miami Downtown Development Authority (DDA) as the 3.8-square-mile (9.8 km2)-area east of Interstate 95 between the Rickenbacker Causeway to the south and Julia Tuttle Causeway to the north. Locally known as Downtown, the area is a cultural, financial, and commercial center of South Florida, tracing its present-day history back to the 19th century. In recent years, Downtown Miami has grown and physically expanded to become the fastest-growing area in Miami, with large scale high-rise construction and rapid population increase. Greater Downtown is home to many major museums, parks, education centers, banks, company headquarters, courthouses, government offices, theaters, shops and many of the oldest buildings in the city.   read more…

The Freedom Tower in Miami

4 November 2015 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Miami / South Florida, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  7 minutes

Freedom Tower © Tom Schaefer/cc-by-sa-2.5

Freedom Tower © Tom Schaefer/cc-by-sa-2.5

The Freedom Tower is a building in Miami, designed by Schultze and Weaver. It is currently used as a contemporary art museum and a central office to different disciplines in the arts associated with Miami Dade College. It is located at 600 Biscayne Boulevard on the Wolfson Campus of Miami Dade College. On September 10, 1979, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. It was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark on October 6, 2008. On April 18, 2012, the AIA‘s Florida Chapter placed the building on its list of Florida Architecture: 100 Years. 100 Places as the Freedom Tower / Formerly Miami News and Metropolis Building.   read more…

Fisher Island off Miami

14 August 2015 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Miami / South Florida Reading Time:  7 minutes

Fisher Island © Alexf/cc-by-sa-3.0

Fisher Island © Alexf/cc-by-sa-3.0

Fisher Island is a census-designated place of metropolitan Miami, located on a barrier island of the same name. As of the 2010 census, Fisher Island had the highest per capita income of any place in the United States. The island has only 218 households and a total population of 467 persons. A relatively small part of the northern part of the island is incorporated as a part of the city of Miami Beach.   read more…

The Florida Keys

13 July 2015 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Bon voyage, Miami / South Florida, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks, Environment Reading Time:  15 minutes

Fort Jefferson - Dry Tortugas © U.S. National Park Service

Fort Jefferson – Dry Tortugas © U.S. National Park Service

The Florida Keys are an archipelago of 4500 islands in the southeast United States. They begin at the southeastern tip of the Florida peninsula, about 15 miles (24 km) south of Miami, and extend in a gentle arc south-southwest and then westward to Key West, the westernmost of the inhabited islands, and on to the uninhabited Dry Tortugas. The islands lie along the Florida Straits, dividing the Atlantic Ocean to the east from the Gulf of Mexico to the west, and defining one edge of Florida Bay. At the nearest point, the southern tip of Key West is just 90 miles (140 km) from Cuba. The Florida Keys are between about 23.5 and 25.5 degrees North latitude, in the subtropics. The climate of the Keys however, is defined as tropical according to Köppen climate classification. More than 95 percent of the land area lies in Monroe County, but a small portion extends northeast into Miami-Dade County, primarily in the city of Islandia, Florida. The total land area is 137.3 square miles (356 km2). As of the 2000 census the population was 79,535, with an average density of 579.27 per square mile (223.66 /km2), although much of the population is concentrated in a few areas of much higher density, such as the city of Key West, which has 32% of the entire population of the Keys. The city of Key West is the county seat of Monroe County. The county consists of a section on the mainland which is almost entirely in Everglades National Park, and the Keys islands from Key Largo to the Dry Tortugas.   read more…

Fort Jefferson on Garden Key

8 April 2015 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Miami / South Florida, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks Reading Time:  8 minutes

Fort Jefferson © U.S. National Park Service

Fort Jefferson © U.S. National Park Service

Fort Jefferson is a massive but unfinished coastal fortress. It is the largest masonry structure in the Americas, and is composed of over 16 million bricks. The Dry Tortugas are part of Monroe County. The fort is located on Garden Key in the lower Florida Keys within the Dry Tortugas National Park, about 70 miles (110 km) west of the island of Key West. A series of engineering studies and bureaucratic delays consumed 17 years, but the construction of Fort Jefferson (named after the third President, Thomas Jefferson) was finally begun on Garden Key in 1846. The new fort would be built so that the existing Garden Key lighthouse and the lighthouse keeper’s cottage would be contained within the walls of the fort. The lighthouse would continue to serve a vital function in guiding ships through the waters of the Dry Tortugas Islands until the current metal light tower was installed atop an adjacent wall of the fort in 1876. The original brick lighthouse tower was taken down in 1877.   read more…

Miami Beach

19 November 2014 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Miami / South Florida Reading Time:  11 minutes

Biscayne Island © Averette/cc-by-3.0-en

Biscayne Island © Averette/cc-by-3.0-en

Miami Beach is a coastal resort city in Miami-Dade County in Florida. It was incorporated on March 26, 1915. The municipality is located on a series of natural and man-made barrier islands between the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay, the latter which separates the Beach from Miami city proper. The neighborhood of South Beach, comprising the southernmost 2.5 square miles (6.5 km2) of Miami Beach, along with Downtown Miami and Port of Miami, collectively form the commercial center of South Florida. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 88,000. Miami Beach has been one of America’s pre-eminent beach resorts since the early 20th century.   read more…

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