When I first moved into Isles at Oasis over three years ago, I fell in love. I fell in love with my…read morehome and the community I moved into. We had 24 hour a day, manned security guard, I lived in front of a beautiful lake with breathtaking sun sets, an active HOA which enforced the rules and great neighbors. By the time I left: 1)the manned security was replaced by remote security. They hired this company called Envera, which operates a remote security. In order to get in, you have to have you car use a sticker which allows a scanner to read your a resident or use the visitor box at the entrance and have your drivers license scanned. Allegedly anyway, tons of people tailgate to get in (especially people in Caribbean isles)... and sometimes the company just has the bars raised at random parts of the day including nights sometimes and all holidays. I never felt secure. Plus it was a pain to get Uber eats or other services to get thru. And good lord the lines to get in! This never happened with manned security. 2) neighbors... had mostly good ones but I got some to the right of me that were a piece of work. The kids were jerks. They purposefully did things to piss us off including riding their bikes through our front yard including when we had Christmas lights in order to unplug our extensions cords 3) Capri never had a fountain... why? All the other subcommunities got one 4) The sign to Isles at Oasis was always lighted and beautiful... not so much by feb this year This is why, although it pained me to move out... kinda glad I did... neighborhood just wasn't the same anymore.

Buena Vista is a neighbourhood in Miami. It is located south of Little Haiti, north of the Miami…read moreDesign District. It is worthy of a stroll when you are in the area, maybe after checking out the glamourous stores in The design district. Buena Vista is primarily a residential neighbourhood with historic single-family homes primarily from the 1920s. The Buena Vista East Historic District is located in Buena Vista, and includes some of the oldest homes in the neighbourhood. I enjoyed my stroll around and enjoyed checking all the architectural style of these homes. Go see for yourself.

Moon Over the Gables in Ponce De Leon Circle is a cultural event surrounding the public art piece,…read moreMuseum of the Moon by UK artist Luke Jerram. Museum of the Moon is a replica of the moon that is lit from within and measures seven meters in diameter. The surface of this moon features 120dpi detailed NASA imagery of the lunar surface. Each centimeter of the sculpture equals 5km of the moon's surface. Museum of the Moon has been on tour around the world and will also be displayed in Spain, Chile, and Germany. Several moons have been made and they are touring simultaneously. A number of museums throughout the country have also purchased replicas of this piece for their collections. The City of Coral Gables hosted different events around the base of the artwork during several evenings in March. Events included story time, arts and crafts, yoga, and on the night I visited live music and food trucks.

Wow, what a sculpture. It looks different from all angles... and what I saw was an elephant, and…read morethen a dinosaur, but who knows..... Go check it out and tell me what you see. Here is some information regarding this work or art that I sourced. On April 30, 1986, the 33-story Lincoln Tower reached a milestone when it was announced that it was officially topped-off and on schedule to open in the Summer of 1986. Two weeks later, the project's owners revealed another important milestone for the building that would become the offices of Barnett Bank at 701 Brickell Avenue. Bank of America is now the marquis tenant in the building today. The Lincoln Property Company, in partnership with the Metropolitan Insurance Company, announced that they commissioned Boston-based John Raimondi to create a large sculpture to be placed on the bay-side of the tower's property. At just 38 years of age, Raimondi, who had an affinity for artwork that supported conservation and honored endangered species, was one of the hottest American artists at the time. Raimondi was tasked with creating the largest bronze sculpture in North America for this project. Once it was complete, the sculpture was 38 feet in height and 78 feet wide, requiring ten tons of bronze to shape into an abstract representation of an eagle's wing. When asked about the cost of the materials, Raimondi said that he used $100,000 of bronze to create the sculpture. He did not indicate what he was paid, but speculation had his compensation in the high six-figure range. The artist called the sculpture 'Aquila', which is Latin for eagle, aligning with Raimondi's desire to honor endangered species. When the sculpture was installed along the bay, behind Lincoln Tower, Leslie Judd Ahlander of the Miami News described it as "its soaring forms of verdigris green are beautifully sited against the bay". Inspecting it for the first time after installation, Raimondi was quoted as saying: "I'm very pleased to see the manatees, the porpoises, and blue herons coming by here, that's what I wanted." He felt the sculpture provided a symbolic kindred spirit between Brickell's modern skyline and its natural environs. The art of welding bronze into a shape the size of Aquila was considered a lost art by the mid-1980s. Harry Rand, an art expert at the National Museum of American Art, considered the sculpture significant because of "its size and virtuosity of the fabrication." He went on to say that bronze had not "been fabricated on a scale like that." The dedication of the sculpture was conducted on May 1, 1987. Many may remember the sculpture making a cameo appearance as a prop in the movie "Something About Mary" in 1998, more than ten years after its dedication. Today, hundreds of Brickell residents and visitors pass by this magnificent work of art on a daily basis, most probably not knowing its origin or story. While the name of Lincoln Tower has changed several times since 1987, the sculpture continues to inhabit the shoreline of Biscayne Bay as a reminder of how development, art and nature have come together in one of America's fastest growing urban settings. In closing, the best description of this fine work of art was provided by Carl Belz, director of the Rose Art Museum, when he wrote the catalog forward for Aquila: "To Soar like the eagle may not be within our power. We know the kinesthetic sensation nonetheless, and that sensation is in this instance dramatically heightened by the sculpture's placement before sea and sky, before vast and immeasurable spaces that impel our thoughts toward freedom."

On Sundays during the Lincoln Road farmer's market, you need to plan a stop by the most adorable…read morebooth run by an affable Peruvian lady-duo, Alejandra Cruzado and Vilma Montoya. Sweet, generous and oozing all the affection that your own grandmother might offer, the ladies share complimentary samples of their homemade guacamole, ceviche, salsa and Peruvian juice. If you're after a sweet and refreshing beverage, don't miss the dulcet Mamey or sweetly tart Passion Fruit. But if you're looking for the perfect pair of afternoon nibbles, the ceviche and guacamole isn't to be overlooked. Not being a huge ceviche fan, I was completely stunned to fall hook, line and sinker for their toothsome creation. They don't stray from the one variety they offer, which, to me, suggests they've spent loads of time perfecting the recipe they've likely prepared for their own families for years and years. The guac is equally flawless. Fresh, zesty, creamy and perfectly seasoned, these ladies really have something going. You can find them positioned in front of the American Apparel at 720 Lincoln.

Today I had their Mango-Lime juice with cream of coco for the first time and it was delicious! A…read moreperfect treat for a hot summer day. Definitely worth a try! Can also get without the coco if you prefer. The owner was so nice and welcoming and it took all but 3 seconds to get.

I put a grocery bag full of Yibbies' mangos on my kitchen counter on Friday, and ever since, my…read moreentire place has had the yummy, citrusy sweet aroma of mango in the air. So far I've eaten a few of them plain, and they were very tasty, sweet and flavorful. Later this week, just in time for the 4th of July holiday, I'll be trying my hand at creating some delicious mango salsa. Wish me luck!!

Sweetest juciest mangos I have ever had the pleasure of cooking with in Miami. The kind that make…read moreyou wish you were eating them right there beside the ocean so you could run in there with one in your mouth so you could just kill two birds with the one stone....taste the bounty of the land and wash off the sticky juices with the warm ocean waves. We live in paradise.

This is a super cool art idea in my opinion. Why? Because its ever changing, the concept is the sky…read morewhich pokes through the deliberate gaps to the structure of this arcade. Here is some information regarding it. Johnston Marklee's façade arcade frames the north end of Paradise Plaza, which terminates the new central walk street of Paseo Ponti. The paseo spans the extent of the four-block development and the new plaza includes a garden with a site-specific art installation. The JML façade is defined by a structural frame which forms the curtain wall at the ground level, defines the open-air arcade on the second level, and extends as a parapet to frame the rooftop garden and the sky beyond, visible from the length of the four-block paseo. The rationalist grid is wrapped in a concave curved stainless-steel cladding system of reflective and abraded panels. Stripped of ornament, the curved surfaces are modeled and amplified by natural light. The consistency of detail from the plaza to the city scale reflects the presence of the building as part of the larger urban fabric.

Well if you know me, then you know i like :"real" not just the thrills, the whistles and glam. I…read morelike to see the real situation, the rea atmosphere. So as always I came to check it out myself. The sat nav - announced :"You are here" but obviously not, as no MAGIC sign was to be seen! I never mind this though as I end up discovering more and see all sorts from the car when you are lost and that is life in a nutshell, and what discovery and travel offers, and what I jam. So, i see a gentleman, and ask him "are you local?.'' his response 'Yes". Me - "I am lost, sat nav says I have arrived, I am looking for a HUGE silver metal sign saying Magic -do you know where it is?." Him - " ah yes I have heard of that but never seen it". So approx 1/10th of a mile away it screams at me - how could you never know of this when you are local?. whatever..... See my pics. Again, instagram worthy for all the teens/Miami/attention seekers out there out there, super cool spot. Supposedly a seedy area, high crime, blah blah, But it seems this area is starting to be cleaned up, aka the NEXT Wynwood. Loads of art/ graffitti splashed around too. A new area for me to discover, go check it out as it is in the throws of this...watch this space.

The Magic City sign is located in a median in Little Haiti, a neighborhood of Haitian exiles as…read morewell as other Caribbean immigrants and Hispanics from Central and South America. Magic is an original aluminum sculpture created in 2016 by Laura Kimpton and Jeff Schomberg as part of the The Monumental Word Series. Be Art in West Palm Beach is also part of the series. Magic was first displayed at the Burning Man festival in Nevada. The sign is perfect for Miami with its nickname "Magic City" because its growth was so rapid, as if by magic. When the Magic sign was installed in Miami it was to be a part of art garden designed to feature other Burning Man artists. The sign is also meant to define the entrance to the Magic City Innovation District, an as of yet unbuilt project that will include residential, hotel, office, retail and expo space across 18 acres. Currently the sign sits alone forlornly on a weed infested median with cracked concrete. It looks like there was a planter in front but whatever was in it died long ago. The promised sculpture garden never materialized and this area has been waiting for the development project for years. Will the promised magic ever happen for Little Haiti? Still waiting to find out.