Sun, sand, music, and trains in Miami

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@AverytheCubanAmerican 4 ай бұрын

To add on to what they said about the Overseas Railroad: After the railroad was damaged by the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, as the railroad was financially unable to rebuild the destroyed sections, the roadbed and remaining bridges were sold to the Florida state government, which refurbished it for car use, becoming the Overseas Highway. Unsupported sections were added in 1935 to widen it for vehicular traffic. Dismantled trackage was recycled, painted white, and used as guardrails. So the Old Seven Mile Bridge was originally a train bridge, then it became a car bridge in 1935, before of course being replaced by a newer Seven Mile Bridge in 1982, as Hurricane Donna in 1960 further damaged the bridge. After the Overseas Highway was modernized and widened with bridges replaced, the Old Seven Mile Bridge and other old Overseas Railroad bridges later became part of the Florida Keys Overseas Heritage Trail! When the Overseas Railroad was in operation, it had the Havana Special as its premier train, running daily except Sundays between NYC and Key West, with connecting ferries to Havana! With speed restricted to 15 miles per hour (24 km/h) on the long bridges, it took a leisurely four and a half hours to travel the distance between Key West and Miami! The engineering challenges involved in constructing the Overseas Railroad were immense, requiring numerous feats of ingenuity and perseverance. The natural channels between the islands were often too deep to allow for a rail bed on the ocean floor. Instead, bridges were built utilizing wood trestles with concrete piers sunk up to 110 feet into the ocean floor. In other areas, huge retaining walls had to be built to hold back the ocean and create land for the rail bed! Flagler wanted the Overseas Railroad because after the Panama Canal was announced, he knew that Key West was the US's closest deep-water port to the Canal, could take advantage of Latin American trade, and with the canal, would allow significant trade possibilities with the West Coast

@SupremeLeaderKimJong-un 4 ай бұрын

The story behind the cats at Hemingway's home is that he was given a white six-toed cat named Snow White by a ship's captain named Stanley Dexter, a colleague of Hemingway’s who, along with cats, loved the sea. Thus, the polydactyl cats there are descendants of Snow White! Among sailors, 6-toed cats (sometimes called mitten cats) are viewed as good luck and are considered better hunters aboard the ship. Hemingway also lived in Cuba! Ernest Hemingway means a lot to the Cuban people, as Cuba was his favorite country and he called it home for a part of his life. He often said “I am Cuban” and indeed he considered Cuba to be his true home. Books like A Moveable Feast, The Old Man and the Sea and Islands in the Stream were written in Cuba. Even Fidel Castro appreciated him, saying how he and his guerrillas were inspired by For Whom the Bell Tolls for their tactics as they were battling in the Sierra Maestro. When he won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, he gave it to the people by putting it in the custody of the Catholic Church in the basilica of El Cobre, the patron saint of Cuba. The Cuban government and individual Cubans have honored him in many ways, the most important being preserving the Finca Vigia and opening it as the Hemingway House Museum. The Pilar (Hemingway's boat) was brought to the Finca and preserved as well! When he died, the fishermen of Cojimar, where he docked the Pilar and where he set The Old Man and the Sea, commissioned a statue of Hemingway made entirely of metal from their propellers and other metal pieces of their small boats. It stands today in the small harbor of Cojimar. Hemingway also started the well-known International Billfishing Tournament in Cuba in 1950 that is still being held each year. In fact, the only time that Hemingway met Fidel Castro was when Castro entered the tournament in 1960, shortly after the revolution. Castro won and Hemingway presented Castro with his prize.

@AverytheCubanAmerican 4 ай бұрын

Before it was connected with the Overseas Railroad, Key West was historically a Cuban-American center! The roosters there are descendants of those bred in Cuba for fighting! Key West was so Cuban that José Marti went there in 1892 to rally their support for Cuban independence from Spain! Key West was once known as the cigar capital of the world because of the Cubans, with cigar making in Key West dating to 1831, but in the 1880s, hurricanes, limited freight connectivity, lack of room of expansion, and labor unrest led many manufacturers to move to Tampa, thus Tampa's Ybor City was born, named after prominent Cuban cigar manufacturer Don Vincent Martinez Ybor who obtained 40 acres of land for a company town in 1885 and built a permanent factory in 1886 (which was the largest cigar factory in the world; now a historic site). Unlike Cuban sandwiches made in Key West and Miami, Tampa-style Cuban sandwiches have Genoa salami, influenced by the Italians also in Ybor City. An interesting fact about Tri-Rail when Dave mentioned that their purpose was to give an alternative to driving on I-95, is that it was originally meant to be temporary! When the current system began in 1989 by FDOT, they wanted to provide temporary commuter rail service while construction crews widened Interstate 95 and the parallel Florida's Turnpike! But because the service proved to be extremely popular, they made it permanent! You can definitely see why it's a popular service! You can connect to the Metrorail system like in Hialeah, you can take it right to Miami International Airport, and as shown here, being able to take it right to downtown at MiamiCentral with multiple connections! With its connections, how it's a fully built-out system, and being a catalyst for downtown development, the Metromover is quite the successful urban people mover! And underneath the Metrorail tracks is the Underline, a linear park which besides being a path for jogging and cyclists, features things like bike repair stations, exercise equipment, art installations, and provides access to public transportation to a university, over 20 schools, hospitals, urgent care facilities, major malls and over 10,000 businesses!