Key Biscayne: ce qu’il y a autour, comment y aller et quand venir · 2026

UUSAblogi · 5 oct. 2009Lire

South of the city itself stretches a chain of islands, the so-called "keys". The closest one to Miami is called Key Biscayne, and it is connected to downtown by a bridge. Actually, there are two bridges: one is new, built recently, which leads to the island, and the other one gradually separates from the main one and descends toward the coast. It's a very calm and beautiful place; people come with their whole families to swim, fish, have picnics, and go windsurfing. The island is home to the Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park. Entry is paid, but the nature there is stunning! There is all sorts of wildlife: squirrels, rabbits, storks, opossums, parakeets... and iguanas! There are so many lizards and iguanas! They aren't afraid of people and just crawl under your feet. And there are no snakes, at least we didn't see any while we were there. We arrived! The last bus stop is right before the park entrance. From there, you have to walk to the cafe where Nadya works and where we agreed to meet Reyna. At the park entrance, we are greeted by a strange sign: "Park closes at 8:16". I'm puzzled—why such precision? Why not 8:00? Or, in the worst case, if they really wanted to, 8:15? But why 8:16? Strange things are happening. A couple of days later, it gets even more interesting: the park starts closing at 8:14, then the sign changes again: 8:13... and then it hit us! The park closes at sunset! We are such geniuses =).. blondes)) 2 b continued

UUSAblogi · 5 oct. 2009Lire

We wake up early - it's a 2-hour trip on two buses to Key Biscayne, the island where we work. We promised our landlady we'd be there by 10... I hear the alarm, open my eyes, and suddenly see THIS slowly crawling down the wall towards me...!! Something huge and whiskered...!! Brrr... disgusting, just thinking about it... I screamed so loud! The whole room had to calm me down... it turned out to be a "regular" cockroach... some "regular" thing! It was 10 times bigger than our standard ones... you'd start stuttering if you saw it! A terrifying beast... to be continued ...Anyway, the start of the day was quite lively)) We have breakfast and rush to the bus stop... camera ready - we have to capture everything, otherwise no one will believe we were in Miami)) At first, we even took photos with trash cans (..yes, it's embarrassing, there is such a photo) - EVERYTHING was so different, and also with fire hydrants (you know, those yellow ones, like in the movies).. later, when we showed the photos to our American friends, they were puzzled why we were hugging a hydrant in the photo. How do you explain to them that we don't have those, and what they consider a mundane object is of great cultural interest to us?)) So... what was I saying? Ah yes, the bus stop: well, that's a separate story... first of all, what is this structure actually? ..Nothing - just a bare piece of asphalt and a pole with the route name. THAT'S IT. No bench, no shelter from the sun.. (reminding you that it's +40-43 outside!!) And that's because the bus is intended for very, very, very, very poor Miamians (or students traveling on W&T=)) - the city is huge, distances are long, almost everyone has their own car.. it's more convenient.. so buses are for the lower class, but on the bright side, they are never crowded, there are almost always free seats... so, we're standing there waiting, bare space, and you can't go anywhere into the shade - the bus doesn't just stop at the stop! You have to catch it! You run out onto the road, wave desperately so the driver notices you, only then will it stop! Finally, ours arrives.. we get inside, smile at the driver, and he says hi to us (I love Americans! They always say hello, ask how you are - it's a rhetorical question, pronounced in one breath, like this: hi,howareyou? and doesn't imply an answer - pure courtesy), we pay $2 each (the ticket itself costs 1.5, but to transfer to the second bus later, you need to pay an extra 50 cents for a transfer) - you can't ride as a "stowaway" here, everyone pays at the entrance... sigh.. a poor student's heart finds this incomprehensible and unusual)) We walk into the cabin.... and - literally "freeze" to the seats, it's TERRIBLY cold inside, they clearly overdo it with the air conditioning! You sit there, freezing the whole way, and then you get out - and warm up, that's the system! And inside the cabin, there are these magical yellow cords.. - you pull the cord - the bus will stop=) If you don't pull it, naturally, you'll miss your stop.. a light turns on for the driver and an electronic voice says: "Stop requested" and everyone now knows where you're getting off, real magic!=) We notice one more unusual thing - in all buses, the first seat is for some reason dedicated to a certain Rosa Parks.. cool, back home they build monuments to prominent people, name streets after them.. immortalize them, so to speak... but here, look at that, a seat on a bus! It turns out that previously, front seats on buses were intended only for white people, while black people were assigned seats at the back of the cabin.. but one day, an elderly black woman got on and sat in a forbidden seat at the front of the bus.. there was so much indignation, shouting, questions! But she calmly smiled and replied that she was very tired and couldn't go any further.. a real fuss was raised about this, a court case was even launched! ..but as we know, good ultimately always triumphs over weaker good=), so everything ended