Drive to Viscaya and Brunch

Drive to Viscaya and Brunch
January 21st, 2001

Click here for more pictures : Photoshoot along the causeway, 4 generations of Jaguar Saloons

it was a cold winter morning as the temperature was only 51 deg. (yes that's cold by South Florida standard...) when a dozen cars met at Haulover Park in North Miami Beach for a leisurely drive south on Collins Avenue to South Beach and then over the bay into Miami and to Villa Viscaya, an Italian Renaissance Villa built at the turn of the century, now a museum with 10 acres of formal gardens.

After the customary standing around and car talking, the group mvc-376s.jpg (31275 bytes) proceeded south on Collins Avenue and offered an interesting variety of Jaguars, classic and modern including XK120, E-type, Mark I, Mark IX, series 3 XJ6, X300 V12 and XJR... altogether, the very best cars produced in their categories over the past 50 years.

Despite the traffic thru South Beach, everybody managed to stay together and we arrived at Villa Viscaya, just south of downtown Miami, and its park with dense tropical foliage. After parking the cars, we went into the Villa Museum for an interesting tour.

During World War I, in 1916, James Deering, made fabulously wealthy by International Harvester, wiped out unemployment in Miami. He hired a third of the city's work force to build an Italian Renaissance villa set in a lush tropical hammock at a cost of $22 million. He named it Vizcaya (a corruption of word Biscayne) after the Biscayne Bay waters that splashed against his palace.

mvc-377s.jpg (38916 bytes) The villa's 72 rooms are decorated with ancient tapestries, carpets and artworks, called by National Geographic magazine a display of "Italian decorative art, unexcelled in America." Ten acres of formal gardens give visitors plenty of walking room. Just opposite the gardens a sculptured stone barge serves as a breakwater to protect against storms. During Prohibition days it also was used as a dock for unloading shipments of bootleg booze, but the villa is also known for more positive happening such as a meeting between then President Reagan and the Pope.

After touring the museum, a short hop across the causeway took us to Sunday's on the Bay, a waterfront restaurant on Key Biscayne with a great brunch.

Originally we had planned to drive all the way to the Cape Florida lighthouse but that was cancelled and replaced by a photo shoot along the causeway with the city of Miami as a background. Some prefered to head straight home but we finished the day with 4 generations of Jaguar Saloons side by side, an very unusual sight.

Scroll the page for more pictures !

mvc-378s.jpg (34935 bytes)