Ah shit, i completely forgot, sorry man!
Not sure if youre there already or not, but
South beach has a lot of different stuff going on. If you want restaurants, the mews cafe is good for breakfast, casual and pretty good food, right on ocean drive.
Theres a little cafeteria called las olas cafe on 6th and euclid in south beach that not too many tourists know, but has amazing food with huge portions. Its a cuban place and it may look like a random little place, and its nothing fancy, barely anywhere to sit, but some of the best most “authentic” food in miami comes out of places like this. Theres a chris ruth i believe, if you want to spend money, and theres a really good brazilian steakhouse id recommend if you wanna eat a shit ton of steak and meats.
Other than that Id stay away from eating on ocean drive, exception the news cafe… most of the places are expensive and suck. Oh, and DO NOT say yes to the giant margaritas or special menu, and ASK FOR THE PRICE before buying (on ocean drive).
I used to work in a hotel down there and the amount of angry people ive seen is crazy… these restaurants will let you get settled in and even give you a few free shots to get you going then say, oh you want our SIGNATURE giant margaritas!? They look cool, sure, but theyre 50 dollars!! They purposely throw that question in at the end so you say yes and dont think about price, and theyre nowhere on the menu.
The same goes for the specials menu.
A couple once told me they paid almost 200 dollars for 4 items, 2 of the giant margaritas (the giant ones with the coronas in them, im sure youll see them), and two “specials”… ocean drive is for walking and the beach, dont get scammed!
If you like clubs, theres so many… LIV, story, Ivy, Cameo, etc
For places downtown and closer to where youre staying, brickell is nice and has a lot of stuff going on at night as well and is a bit more classy I would say. Lots of different places to eat of all different kinds so check out google for specific places.
Wynwood is also really cool, depending on what you like. Its basically the art district of Miami, which is a section of blocks completely covered in really cool “professional” graffiti. Theres also really good micro brewerys, so if you like beer check some of them out! Its more of a hipsterish crowd at night, but in the day time its mostly families, at night there is a lot more going on though… lots of neat little places to eat and shop and look around. Definitely something to check out.
further south you have coral gables amd coconut grove.
The CoCo walk is really nice to walk around at and eat, shop. Theres a place with amazing crab legs and amazing view of the water there but i cant remember the name. Damn. Its not hard to find a good restaurant there though.
Coral gables has more of the high end places, lots of nice restaurants.
Anywhere further its going to get expensive with uber. If you can hop on the metrorail, do it, its super simple as it only runs in two directions so you cant get lost like the subway in NY and its cheap.
If you like carribean/central american food and want some that is amazing and something you will not find outside of miami, El Palacio De Los Jugos is my favorite. Get a fat tray of food and a passionfruit granizado and youll be happy.
Cafe Versailles is also good… thats the place on the news where everybody was when Castro died. Definitely somewhere to go just to say youve been.
If you wanna go shopping check out the dolphin mall, or the dadeland mall. That will be far for an uber though, but the dadeland mall you could get to via the metrorail.
Those are pretty much the general things to do. If you like museums or cultural things theres the perez art museum, the frost museum, and i believe a cuban history museum. The Calle Ocho festival just passed. Calle Ocho is cool but unless youre looking to buy random shit its not really a place to go spend your day.
Stay out of Overtown and allapattah, little haiti, unless you want drugs or to get robbed.