It's been raining here for a solid week with very few breaks for the sun to peek out. Nevertheless, Becky made plans to visit the Sawgrass Mills outlet mall in Sunrise, FL on Saturday with the excellent logic "Hey, if it rains I'll be inside, so it won't matter." We made the 70 mile drive down to Sunrise and found what is actually the sixth largest shopping mall in the USA. The mall was built by the Simon company, the biggest real estate company in the world. It's got 20 anchor tenants (!) and is twice the size of Town Center in Cobb County with over 2.3 million square feet of shopping. 'Nuf said. The place is huge.
I dropped Becky off at noon with a promise to return by 6PM for dinner with old friends who were to meet us at the Grand Lux Restaurant. I headed over to Miami Beach and the South Beach area to investigate Lincoln Road, the famous art-deco area of the city and what some have called the "social hub" of Miami. Lincoln Road runs from the Atlantic Ocean to Biscayne Bay and is almost entirely closed to vehicular traffic. It's been renamed the Lincoln Road Mall, and what a mall it is!
The entire area was awash with people speaking English, Spanish, French, German and a couple languages I couldn't identify. Besides those walking the streets I saw people go by on segues, on roller blades, bikes and skateboards. A true international gathering place just lined with restaurants to satisfy every conceivable taste from pizza to sushi to shepherd's pie.
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| Restaurants line each side of the Lincoln Road Mall, as it's called. Most people choose to eat outside under the umbrellas. |
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| Lincoln Road Mall. One of the many outdoor seating areas. |
After walking the area for a while I drove over to the beach, jumped in the 85-degree surf, soaked up some sun and drove back to Sawgrass Mills to meet Becky for dinner. That's when I knew something strange had happened. With those two million square feet of shopping and over 300 different stores Becky had only managed to pick up a couple small items! She said she finally got tired of looking at merchandise and just "burned out" on shopping. I didn't know that could happen to a woman! LOL
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| Sawgrass Mills Outlet Mall. Just the place to get your 10,000 steps for the day. And then some! |
Later that evening we learned that people fly to Sawgrass Mills from all over the Caribbean, from Puerto Rico and even Central America to shop. And shop they do! We saw people pushing luggage carts like you see in airports, except here at Sawgrass they were filling their empty suitcases and roller bags with the merchandise they were buying. There was some serious shopping underway.
We had a great dinner with an old friend of Becky's -- a man she knew as one of her son's playmates almost 40 years ago -- the headed back to Jupiter and to bed. A great day after the week of rain that had kept us close to home.
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