Faced with the delicious opportunity of two days in Miami between cruises, we decided to “bring on da funk” in South Beach rather than committing ourselves to the prisons that are plastic hotels, the same the world around.

South Beach is at the bottom of a little strip of land – known as Miami Beach – between the Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Development of South Beach as well as the rest of the Miami Beach area began in the 1930’s, and continued into the early 1950’s. Hotels and public buildings were erected in the hoydenesque Art Deco style. No corner left unturned, no cornice left undecorated, nothing too strange for South Beach. Art Deco at its best and worst.

Back in the day, wealthies and semi-wealthies flooded Miami Beach for the winter season. Stories of ladies wearing mink stoles and gold lame’ sandals to breakfast are, for the most part, true. Other stories of gangsters and their cronies in the entertainment industry taking up winter residence are, also, quite true. And Cuba, with all its questionable enchantments, was just a fast boat ride away.

Times changed and South Beach fell into crumbling disrepair.It’s only been in the past ten years or so that SoBe has risen from the flying cement chunks of jackhammers to become the place in Miami. The gold lame’ sandals have been replaced by Prada and Manolo. The capacious – and, now, politically incorrect – alligator bags have given sway to Kate Spade’s tiny little pocketbooks. It’s become so totally fashionable that there is a totally slick magazine, Ocean Drive, named for the street that runs along the water. How slick is it? As slick as it gets. They even have an editor for Fine Dining, Wine and Cigars.

The Ocean Drive hotels and those a block or two away from the ocean still have evocative names. Excelsior, Albion, Biltmore, Barbizon … and the legendary Delano … places Granny or Great-Grandmother would have stayed back then. Wicked pastel colors still rule and even newly-built properties hark – often painfully to the discriminating observer – back to the Art Deco days.

Indian Creek Hotel

We wanted the old SoBe experience and found it in the Indian Creek Hotel, which is actually a little bit north of South Beach.

Some hotels are renovated. The Indian Creek has been retrovated. Closed up for four long years until new owners took over in 1994, nothing much had changed since the thirties except the largely hidden upgrades to bring the hotel into conformation with building and occupancy codes.

Period Luggage Left in Lobby

The storage rooms were full of treasures, including left-behind luggage from the period. The original furniture was still in the guest rooms, awaiting new upholstery. Twelve single rooms became six two-room suites with the installation of new fire stairs. There are 55 other rooms, eleven of which are connected to the room next door. Stacks of left-behind luggage with ancient travel stickers took us straight back to the bags our mothers and grandmothers owned.

Who stayed there back in the day? Mrs. Ira Gershwin for one. She paid rather less per night than today’s visitors, though the rates at Indian Creek are far more palatable than the properties fronting on sea.

Dragging two cruises’ worth of our own luggage into the slanting afternoon light of the lobby, we took a giant step back in time. It was a generation-warp moment, broken only by the happy presence of the unofficial concierge, YoYo, a Maltese terrier who thinks he owns the place. Checked in, we mounted Miami’s first self-service elevator, still in service after all these years.

An Overnight Guest from the 30's

Miami's First Self-Serve Elevator

Yo Yo, Our Concierge

Our suite, a living room, a bedroom and two baths – it was quite obvious that two former

Sweet Suite

rooms had been combined to make one – drew an, "Oh, My God, I just can’t believe it," from me and a foolish grin from my husband. I remembered, in a place in my brain that hadn’t been scratched in too many years, the décor of an elderly aunt’s home, which was "quite the thing" then and the subject of much family gossip because she’d "Gone Miami."

Not exactly the norm in rural Iowa.

We later learned that the owners, Zammy and Marc, had searched and searched and searched to find the bark cloth in exactly the perfect period-evocative pattern for the hotel’s soft goods – upholstery, bedspreads, and curtains. After much head-shaking and more, "I don’t believe this..." comments including the brain-zap of realizing that the bathroom fixtures and faucets were exact mirrors of those in our own 1936-vintage house, it was time to find the ice machine so we could enjoy a cocktail on the shaded patio, next to a fine swimming pool attended by lizards. Ice machine? "Over there."

Yet another brain-bend for those who remember Cokes in nickel bottles. The original phone booth still works, but accepts phone cards these days.

Years of professional detail-hunting led me to the library shelves.National Geographic magazines from the ‘30s.

And a laundry list. Hmm. Goes to show that Ralph Lauren didn’t invent polo shirts.

The hotel serves both a continental breakfast or cooked-to-order plates.Coffee is always available. Lunch can be gathered in at one of the many Cuban deli spots just a block or so away. With an icy-cold beer, a spinach torta (the

Lunch on the patio

Cuban version of quiche), a salad, or a pobrecito (poor boy) sandwich of ham, cheese, and turkey makes a fine mid-day repast in the shade of Banyan trees.

Even people who are not hotel guests conduct laid-back business in this quiet corner of SoBe where an alligator head floats in the centerpiece fountain. To really ramp up your lunch options, scoot up Collins Street to the Buenos Aires Bakery – great pastries, meat and veggie empanadas – it’s a world-class cheap eats find.

The al fresco restaurants – there seems to be one on the patio of every hotel on Ocean Drive – hold their charms for leading-edge cuisine and cocktails, but if you only have one night in SoBe, Joe’s Stone Crab, a Miami Beach institution from its humble beginnings in 1913, is the essential stop. Tucked down among the more egregious of Y2K art deco nouveaux buildings,

Dinner at Joe's Stone Crab

Joe’s does not disappoint, even with the standard two-hour wait for a table on a slow night. It’s not all touristy as some famous restaurants are. Even the locals drop in once or twice a year to dip into the noisy action at the bar and slurp into the fresh seafood and magnificent side dishes. Crabs are at the order, depending upon how many you think you can eat. This is one place where your eyes are probably not bigger than your stomach. The potato offerings are insanely delicious, the breads top-notch, and there’s no such thing as a bad side dish, from coleslaw with a seriously aggressive tang to the creamed garlic spinach. Oh, and the Key Lime pie.

If you’ve just got to hit the hottest trot in town for foodies, it’s Barton G., “The Restaurant.”

"The" place: Barton G. Restaurant

A recent menu included such astral delights as a seabass ceviche with geoduck clam and black truffles, followed up with chilled stone crab (is Joe listening?) and cucumber torte with caviar crusted shrimp on mizuna greens and a spiced tomato emulsion. A little fish? How about halibut in lettuce broth with champagne-braised black trumpet mushrooms? Then move on to the roasted rack of lamb, herb-crusted, or the option of a five-spiced plantain stuffed loin of lamb with a puree of boniato, cabbage, and chayote. Still have room? Finish off with a flaming chocolate lava cake alongside caramelized macadamia nut ice cream or guava and pears poached in anise with honey-ginger ice cream.

Extra time and money? A stroll down Lincoln Road, a seven-block pedestrian mall, is a shopper’s nirvana. It’s one of the hottest shopping spots in the country, even if too much store frontage is taken up by a GAP. And the street cafés? Killer

Dine al fresco on Lincoln Road

Lunch is very big on Lincoln Road. Weave your way among the cute young moms pushing stylishly-dressed tots in expensive strollers and the scantily- dressed, super-pierced roller-bladers talking on cell phones before you land in one of the outdoor spots. People-watching is almost as good as the lunch. Me, I was in heaven with a great gazpacho and the best tostones this side of Havana or San Juan.

Even more time? Rent a car and drive up A1A and marvel at the mansions on the way to Palm Beach and Boca Raton to find out how the other half lives.

If you are still awake, the nightclub scene starts to heat up as midnight approaches and goes on until the smallish hours approach larger numbers. Celebrity-watching equals the dancing and cocktailing. Just head for the noise. Not that long ago, a bachelor prince of England partied hard at a SoBe club and was without a credit card to pay the chit. Insults were hurled, followed by fists. Oh, so SoBe.

Pam Kane is a world-class traveler, committed “foodie”, and author of twelve books and countless magazine articles. She delights in ferreting out the unusual from South Beach to Singapore, Seattle, Sydney and Saigon. Her first travel book, Cruise Control, a best-seller on amazon.com, is soon to be followed by Happy Sails, the Carefree Cruisers Handbook, scheduled for release in May.She is a member of the East-West News Bureau, the National Association of Travel Journalists, and the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Alan Rettig contributed to this article.