Welcome to South Beach Miami (in December)

Miami was our last trip of the year. In December. Right before the holidays. Five trips in five months is a lot. I was a little travel weary by this point but excited to see what South Beach has to offer. We had a 6:00 am flight. I hate early flights. It was brutal. The crazy thing is that even after a 6am flight and a full day of travel we didn't make it to our hotel until about 7:00 pm Florida time. I was not trying to sit in one of the many hotel restaurants located along Collins Ave and pay over $50 for a meal when I was exhausted, not about to change out of my travel clothes, or put in my contacts, and just needed some food. I found us a cheap take out place to eat and we called it a night.

 

 

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The only outing I planned for us was a speedboat sight seeing ride through Biscayne Bay. It was so fun!!! Once the boat sped up I could not stop laughing. The Miami skyline is gorgeous and we got to see all the big mansions and yachts along the water. Those people are so rich. Jennifer Lopez, Shaqille O'neal, Sean Puffy Combs, and Julio Iglesias all own homes there. The median home price for houses on Star Island is 30 million dollars. It's truly mind boggling.

South Beach is just like I imagined it would be. Modern Art Deco buildings, Palm Trees, gorgeous aqua waters, and fancy cars. I immediately loved the energy of the place. And did you know that South Florida is the capital of Brazilian Butt lifts? I'd heard, but being there I could actually see that it's true. There were a lot of BBL's. I'm sure there are some that we missed but, when you see an obvious BBL you know it. We met up with MJ's brother, fiance, and friends at Hard Rock Cafe back at Bayside Marketplace. I was not thrilled about paying to Uber over there twice in one day (about $60 round trip!), but coming up with a "regular" place to eat was tough and at the time we didn't know where else to go.

 

The first night and morning we were there, I noticed there was some pretty loud music that we could hear from our hotel. The next morning at breakfast and at the pool I found out. We stayed at the Kimpton Surfcomber South Beach. We ate breakfast every day at our hotel. It was free! And it was really good too. The music down at their restaurant is what we were hearing from our rooms and it was the same at the pool. When you walk in the attendants at the front give you towels and finds loungers for you. This was different. We saw two iguanas right away. Ugh. I'd only ever seen those in Mexico and I had no idea they climbed trees!! I was slightly horrified. There were no umbrellas in our spot, but some of the sun was filtered through tall trees surrounding the pool so that helped a little bit. The music that starts at 8:00am is not so great when you are sleeping in your hotel room, but it's awesome when you are at the pool. I didn't know it at the time but our drinks were $30 each!! But they were good and we had a fun time. 

 

Another perk of our hotel is free happy hour from 5-6 pm in the hotel lobby and we didn't miss a single one. We did that and then went to dinner at Dolce Italian. Really cute place with good food. Then we met MJ's brother at South Beach Room Escape. I suck at these. Like REALLY SUCK. If someone put me in there and told me to clue my way out I would never ever leave. Not even if my life depended on it. As a group they figured it all out and Mr Tobias was saved from certain death within the hour.

We saw Ocean Dr. during the day the day before, but we walked over there again to see what it was like at night. I love the Neon lights. It's so unique to Miami. It wasn't as crowded as we thought it would be but I'm guessing it's just because it was December, which as it turns out is perfect weather there. It's actually the driest month in Florida and the temps were 80-83 the whole time.

We spent our last full day in Miami at the beach. Of course!! We had direct beach access through the back side of our hotel. Loungers are free but we did pay $22 to get an umbrella. This was the most relaxing day! The water was nice and warm. I love the look of the beaches there. Bright lifeguard stands and all the bright umbrellas against the white sand was so pretty.

We went to our last happy hour, and then met up for dinner at Sweet Liberty Miami. I liked the place right away just because they actually had happy hour specials and then I liked it even more when they played C'mon Eileen a one hit wonder from the 80's. The place had such a fun vibe. Everyone else ate gross Oysters, which were on happy hour special. MJ and I split an entree because we weren't super hungry, between our hardy breakfast and all the snacks and wine at the beach.

We had a 6 am flight on the way home too! Ugh. We had to wake up around 4 am. The hotel music woke me up every morning at 8am (although I was able to sleep through it a little bit better on that last morning). Between that and the time change and the early morning flights and all the travel we had done recently I just didn't have the get up and go that I would have wanted to on this trip. I still had a ton of fun and when MJ and I are together I'm always happy to be there. It was more about relaxing this time around. I love the vibe in Miami though. I definitely want to go back and do a little bit more like Little Havana or even just bike riding along the boardwalk.