Gone MIA

After a few days in New York working, or as my daughter calls it, on work vacation, I headed south for the rest of the week to Miami where I met up with the family.

New York was good, and I particularly liked staying across the river in Brooklyn, although at certain times of the day the Brooklyn Bridge bore close resemblance to the Dartford Bridge in rush hour. On my last night I met up with old mate New York Addick, where we talked Charlton and the unmitigated disaster of Duchatelet’s ownership.

After many pints we came to the conclusion that Duchatelet hasn’t purposely tried to kill the club, but rather mass incompetence, utterly poor management and sheer stubbornness has resulted in the diabolical situation the club finds itself in. NYA’s most recent analysis of the club’s accounts are well worth a read by the way.

In Miami we have mostly been chilling, staying in the Brickell area which has massively taken off since I first started staying here a few years back. Originally just a non descript high rise office financial district, Brickell is germinating almost a brand new city within a city. Plans to originally regenerate this area back at the start of the century were shelved during the economic downtown but have dramatically bounced back in only a four-year period.

The new Brickell City Centre is now open at a cost of over $1bn. Many shops and restaurants are in place including Quinta La Huella, which we frequented one night, with a lot more to come including a cinema and three story Italian food hall.

Among the Brickell scaffolding which will eventually be cleared to show off amongst other stuff, Florida’s new tallest building, there are already plenty of great places to eat including Fi’lia and the excellent Bachour Bakery. Also a pleasant surprise in America is the mass transport system, free to use.