Derrik Chinn, travel planner extraordinaire and owner of Tijuana tour company, Turista Libre
curated six Spring Break guides for Made to Last. He is our featured
guest blogger and is giving tips and tricks for all of the hottest
Spring Break destinations. This week we are featuring Austin, Texas..
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| Miami |
When talking up Miami, with
its ivory beaches, taut beach bodies, eternally tepid ocean temps and urban
patchwork of sun-bleached pastels, what's to be said for the palmy oasis that
simultaneously serves as home sweet home for Univision telenovela stars, countless
Midwestern grandmothers and Brooke Hogan? Lil' Kim's poignant epiphany arguably
wins:
"You can't come to
Miami and not show any skin. You gotta show something. If you're all covered up
in this heat, you're gonna make me pass out just to look at you."
She's right. What can we
say. There's no way we're topping that. Bienvenido
a Miami.
Beach breakdown. South
Beach is for showing off your all those hours you've been clocking at the gym.
Bill Baggs comes with an optional side of history via the nearby 1825
lighthouse. Virginia Key is easily accessible but spotted with secluded spots.
North Beach, South Beach and Surfside are for surfing. Haulover Beach is for
birthday suits.
South Beach's Art Deco District. The first 20th century neighborhood to make the National Register
of Historic Places, more than 800 architectural gems -- mostly hotels -- dating
to the 1920s, '30s and '40s are spread over some 30 blocks, from Fifth Street
to the south and Dade Boulevard to the north. Walking tours depart the welcome
center (1200 Ocean Drive) daily. mdpl.org.
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| South Beach's Art Deco District |
Coral Castle. No one's really sure how a
5-foot, 100-pound hermit carved more than 1,000 tons of oolite limestone into
his own personal palace using only homemade hand tools. When asked how he
managed to move the massive stones, the largest of which weighs in at 30 tons,
Edward Leedskalnin claimed to know the secrets used to build the pyramids, and
that accomplishing such a feat isn't "difficult if you know how." He
died in 1951, long before anyone could coax him into a "Single-handed
Megastructures For Dummies" book deal. The castle, 25 miles south of
Miami, remains one of America's unexplainable architectural marvels.
coralcastle.com.
Venetian swim party. Pretend
you're in Caesar's bathtub at this 820,000-gallon pool in Coral Gables. Carved
out of a coral rock quarry in 1923, the grottoes, pillars, waterfalls and other
nods to Mediterranean architecture have it on par with a Roman temple. But
what's really heavenly at a high-traffic like this is that all 820,000 gallons
are filled and drained daily with fresh spring water from a subterranean aquifer.
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| The Venetian Pool at Coral Gables |
Fruity spice. Buy your mom something
nice at the Fruit & Spice Park in Homestead, a 37-acre mega-garden that
grows 500 fruits, vegetables, spices, herbs, nuts and exotic edibles (i.e.
things you never knew you could actually eat but it turns out you can, which
isn't to say you'd necessarily actually want to). Open to the public and the
only one of its kind in the U.S., the park's mango department, appropriately
dubbed Mango Row, harvests 160 varieties of the fruit alone.
fruitandspicepark.org.
Alligator Dundee. More
than 2,000 Everglades Alligator Farm, southern Florida's oldest reserve of its
kind. Located on the edge of the Everglades National Park, the farm offers
in-house shows and group hovercraft tours through the wetlands. Get over your
herpetophobia with baby gator show-and-tell, finally figure out the difference
between alligators and crocodiles (the Everglades are the only place on the
planet where both are found in the wild), and save some shock and awe for the
grand finale: feeding time.
After dark. Body warehouse Club Space
and Cameo, a renovated cinema, both play host to DJ superstars. Even though
it's been around since 1926, Mac's Club Deuce, with its neon-pink naked lady
lights and two-for-one, early-morning drink specials, is a fresh breath of dive
bar stank in South Beach's increasingly bottle-service-only zone. Bocce ball
and $1 beers are at Jimbo's, a semi-hidden band of shacks on Virginia Key that
sounds on par with drinking in papaw's rec room.
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| Dance the night away at Cameo |
Deco rates. It's not every day you find
yourself in a vintage Art Deco mecca such as Miami, nor is it every night you
have the chance to sleep under its roof. More than 10 hotels scatter the
district, most of which date to the mid-1930s but underwent renovations in the
later half of the 20th century. The five-story Clevelander totes a poolside bar
and a rooftop lounge. The Park Central often housed Hollywood glitterati like
Clark Gable and Rita Hayworth. The Raleigh Hotel pool is no stranger to fame
either, having logged silver screen moments with Esther Williams in the '40s
and in the '90s airtime on MTV's The
Grind. clevelander.com, theparkcentral.com, raleighhotel.com.