Inyjoy

I would say that it's just the training at this hotel, but I've heard it almost everywhere we've gone- some sort of Spanish accented version of enjoy. I don't know why they pick this particular word- there's no 'j' sound in Spanish, so depending on the speaker's English skill, it comes out anywhere between "enjoy" and "enyoy" inclusive. And the people here say it in response to almost anything (like in response to my saying "thank you" to someone for holding the door- yes, I enjoyed walking through the door). And this is just a transliteration thing, not any sort of commentary. I'm in the minority here not speaking Spanish. Miami is definitely an ESL kind of place. I guess at some point it was mostly Cuban influence, but it's very international at this point.

I took my mandatory walk up to the the lighthouse in the morning. That's a great walk, although today it was a little difficult because the wind has pushed a lot of seaweed onto the shore. The beach is pretty narrow in the first place, and the only place to walk was in the water. That was fine, the ocean temperature is lovely. It's just wet and slow going, and anytime anyone was coming in the other direction it was a challenge to avoid getting either soaked or tangle in the weeds.

Our day was spent by the pool, where we stayed until an incredibly, inconsiderately loud group of 6 or so people sat by us and then went in the pool and got louder and louder and louder until it was unbearable. We went up to the room and I went for a short bike ride before we headed out for our evening activity, a Miami Marlins-New York Mets baseball game.

This was my first indoor baseball game in a while (the last one has a long story surrounding it which I should write up some time). It was beautiful out, with a couple of showers around I suppose. But for whatever reason they chose to have the retractable roof closed. Not sure for what sort of evening they would have it open.

Marlins Park looks and feels like a Structure. It's what architecture critics might call "muscular." You can see the big strong stuff holding the whole thing together. It's not the most inviting place I've ever seen. The air inside was okay, though not as nice as outside. My problem with the closed roof was the reverberation of the sound of the crowd, music and announcer. I found the noise kind of weird and echoey and off-putting. I suppose I could get used to it but I'm glad I don't have to.

Note the trapezoidal scoreboard

It seemed oddly uncrowded outside, but there were plenty of people inside, about half rooting for each team, which made for a pretty constant din. The seats were decent but the whole place was kind of distracting in a way that made it difficult to focus on the game. They also seemed unprepared for the possibility that people might want to buy food once at the game.

When I say that, I mean that there were the normal number of food stands, but every single one had huge lines, from the moment we got there until out hunt for food an hour into the game. They have all kinds of specialty stuff but you couldn't get at it. The ceviché line looked like it would take about a half hour to clear, as did the Cubano line. The celebrate grilled cheese stand ran out of grilled cheese in the 4th inning. I presume these people know that baseball games usually go for longer than 4 innings, but they sure didn't show it.

Eventually we found a sushi place that only took 10 minutes of so to clear the line. The game was very long, including a crucial video review, which was worth it just for the scoreboard graphic.

It ended with a big finish for the home team, so half the crowd went home happy.