On my way to Mexico I had an extended layover in Miami, and allthough it belongs to the US, it feels like something else - with its subtropical climate, the way the nature interacts with the city, and its demographics. 60% of the citiy's population are Hispanics, and there’s actually more Spanish to be heard in the streets than English. The biggest group are the Cubans, with 34.1%. During my stay I read Joan Didion’s book about the city (entitled simply «Miami») from 1987, which especially focuses on the Cuban exile in Miami. She describes the city as follows:
«(…) not exactly an American city as American cities have until recently been understood but a tropical capital: long on rumor, short on memory, overbuilt on the chimera of runaway money and referring not to New York or Boston or Los Angeles or Atlanta but to Caracas and Mexico, to Havana and to Bogotá and to Paris and Madrid. (…) The entire tone of the city, the way people looked and talked and met one another, was Cuban. The very image the city had begun presenting itself, what was then its newfound glamour, its ‘hotness’ (hot colors, hot vice, shady dealings under the palm trees), was that of prerevolutionary Havana, as perceived by Americans.»
I stayed at the Freehand hostel, "a reinvention of the historic Indian Creek Hotel, one of Miami Beach's classic 1930s Art Deco buildings" - a really cool place with a relaxed atmosphere!
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