Miami - June 2013

Greg usually takes a guy's trip with his friends to see the St. Louis Cardinals play somewhere every year.  This year one of the other wives wanted to go, so we all decided to join them and make it a couple's trip to Miami.  We and Ryan and Kelly arrived on Wednesday afternoon.  We ate lunch at a place called, Yardbird, that was pretty pricey, but the food was delicious.  It took us only 20 minutes to park, and that's all I'm going to say about the parking situation and driving in general, but trust me, it was a constant frustration for me the entire trip.  We stayed in a hotel the first night.  We checked in and went directly to the beach with a drink in hand.  We played frisbee for a while, and then went up to the pool. 

View From Our Hotel Room

We asked the hotel where a simple sports bar was located for us to eat at.  He suggested a bar at the Days Inn.  We walked just a couple of blocks to this bar that was located in the basement.  It was a dump, BUT we had a blast!  We ordered a pizza, which was clearly a frozen pizza, yet it was still delicious.  The bar had a ping pong table, so Greg and Ryan played and Kelly and I picked out songs to play on their sterio system.  The boys finally lost all the balls and broke the last one under their foot, and we were too afraid to ask the bartender for more balls, so we headed back to the hotel.  We played our beloved Cards Against Humanity game and blasted Disney songs throughout the room.  Ryan started it, but I loved it and now I still can't get the Pocohantus song, "The Colors of the Wind" out of my mind.

The next day, we checked into our condo.  This is the first time that Greg and I stayed at a condo outside of a time share.  We found it through Flipkey.com, where individuals can rent out their own spaces.  The place we stayed at was nice!  And, maybe a little too nice as we were greeted with only a valet parking option, and were told not to touch our bags as they were loaded onto the carts because the doorman would bring them up to our room for us.



The view from our condo was gorgeous!  We were happy that the place was more updated than the lobby.

There were 2 pools, a waterfall, a bar by the pools, and beach access.  What more could you want?  And really, that's pretty much all that we did the entire trip was enjoy the beach and the pool.

On Thursday, we struggled to find a place to eat yet again.  We walked a good mile and a half to finally find a Pita Hut in a Jewish community.  Kelly and I ordered sushi and Greg and Ryan had a Greek pita sandwich.  The highlight of our walk was that we walked along the inner canal and saw a gigantic yacht with "Usher" on the side of it.  Kelly looked it up to confirm that it was indeed Usher's yacht.  If only we could have seen Usher...

On Friday, Jeremy and Kristen arrived late in the evening, and we didn't make it to play trivia at a restaurant like we wanted.  We ended up ordering pizza, walking on the beach, and then playing cards.

More beach and pool on Saturday, and then we headed to the Florida Marlin's Stadium in the afternoon.  We had a cab drop us off at a Sports bar that turned out to be closed, so we walked about a mile to an authentic Mexican restaurant.  Hardly anyone spoke English, and the entire menu was in Spanish.  Our meals were actually really good and we left there paying only $30 per couple, where each of us had 3 beers.  Not too bad.

The stadium was recently renovated, and they have a retracting roof that was closed and air conditioning was on.  It was weird not being outdoors for baseball, but the break in the heat was nice.  The Cardinals won! 

On Sunday, we dropped Jeremy and Kristen off at Carnival Cruise Line because they were going on a cruise for the week.  The views were gorgeous over there as well.  Greg and I went shopping before we left for our flight, and then we got home around 10 PM.

We had our neighbor watch our pets.  Abby was so afraid of the little boy that is around 10 when they came over the week prior to learn about their responsibilities.  Chase wouldn't even come out to greet them.  We called them before we got home and they said they love seeing Abby smile, and that her son was such a cat whisperer because Chase would always come out when they had Abby outside.  We had to break Chase of jumping up on the table again, but Abby is really good at fetching now and bringing back her toys and gently letting go of them, so I'm happy that it worked out.