Star Struck and Sun Burnt

We've been back in soggy CT for over a week now so I figured it was high time to write about our adventures in Miami & West Palm Beach, FL.

On a bit of a whim Dave planned a weekend get-away for us. The trip was based around going to a Mets preseason baseball game and visiting his friend Chris but of course he also made sure I'd be able to get some beach time in!

We landed in warm, sunny West Palm Thursday afternoon and decided we'd drive half way to Miami and spend the night somewhere inexpensive. And since I'm apparently super frugal when it comes to staying in hotels (although also super cautious of bugs and cleanliness) the hotel I picked ended up being some kind of religious retreat.

If you look closely you can see all the services they offer

In my defense hotels.com had it listed as 'The Forum' with 4 out of 5 stars, if it was listed as 'The Marie Green Forum for Global Missions' a red light may have gone off! Tricky hotels.com!!! But it was a clean, quiet hotel with a comfortable bed, which is exactly what I was looking for -- needless to say Dave has ban me from picking hotels.

In the morning we couldn't get out of there fast enough to head to South Beach! On the way to getting our Duck Tour tickets we saw Kim Kardashian was in the city! Unfortunately our tour was at the same time.

On our tour got to see old art deco buildings Miami is famous for as well as the man-made islands "stars" and other very rich people have built homes on.

Downtown Miami

Some oil mogul's mansion (L) and the Miami Vice house (R)

Andre Agassi & Steffi Graf's house (R)

And of course most houses had their "rides" out front. What mansion on the Bay is complete without a yacht?!

After our tour we headed straight for the beach! (Which for some reason I don't have a single picture of) There was a really nice boardwalk that seemed to go on for miles but because of all the vegetation you couldn't see the beach, even though you literally are ON the beach! And of course the beach itself was really nice! It's so wide the whole back section is used for biking and running [and the life guards ride their 4 wheelers]. We actually didn't even test the water - we figured the # of people on the beach compared to the # of people in the water must have meant the water was cold! There were some pretty big waves too. And the sun just felt so nice! So nice in fact that we didn't want to move and ended up burning to little crisps!

After the beach we headed to hotel #2 - The Kent

Considering this was the most expensive hotel of our stay I expected it to be more cush even though we were warned the art deco hotels were different (not in a bad way). But it was exactly what we wanted - we were a street in from Ocean Dr. (where a lot of the night life is) so we could enjoy all the outdoor bars and restaurants and then return for a quieter night of sleep. (If only that ended up being the case - more on that later...)

After we dropped off all our stuff we changed and headed out for drinks. Dave took us the round about way to Ocean Dr. so we could walk past DASH and to our surprise there was a group of people and security guards outside.

So of course we had to stop to see what was going on (after all we knew Kim was just down the road a couple hours earlier). After a half hour of rumors flying that Kim and Kourtney Kardashian were inside 2 Escalades, a Rolls-Royce, & a Maserati roll up and with that the crowd outside quadruples in size and paparazzi people start showing up. So of course now we have to stay! So all in all after 2.5 hours (yea, we couldn't believe it ourselves - it's not like these people are Julia Roberts and George Clooney!) we saw Birdman, Scott, & we were 5 people away from Kim even though we couldn't see her through all the crazy people!

Birdman (L), look closely you can see Scott's greasy head (R)

Reason we couldn't see Kim

Since we got so caught up in this fiasco we just ended up grabbing a bite and then heading back to change again into nicer clothes to check out the night life. In South Beach $50 cover charges are the norm as is bottle service and being turned away at the door! While I would have loved to experience all of that we had to be up early to get to our Mets game, so we just went for a couple drinks at the Clevelander. And it was probably a good thing b/c I was wiped from the couple hours of sun we soaked in. Heading back to the hotel it was amazing the noise difference of just one street away! We prided ourselves in making such a smart decision! Little did we know we'd barely get any uninterrupted sleep b/c our neighbors must not have been able to afford the cover charges and decided to party in the hotel.

We woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed regardless b/c we were so excited to see our Metsies!! Unfortunately the players we were hoping to see weren't there though :-( You just never know with pre-season games - sometimes you get lucky, we did not! But it was fun non-the-less. As Dave always tells me it's the name on the front that matters not the one on the back! And we had another celebrity siting! Jerry Seinfeld was 2 sections over with his family!!

Our awesome seats thanks to Dave's friend Chris

After the game we had a couple drinks with Chris, his wife Bevin and her brother and his girlfriend at the Yard House - really wish we had one in CT! And then we went to check into the last hotel of our stay. Since it was a Holiday Inn we figured it was a safe bet it was going to be more what we are used to!

On our last day in West Palm Beach we went to the Loggerhead Marine Life Center which had more turtles than they had room for due to injuries from cold shock since FL was hit pretty bad this year with cold weather. These were just a few of the turtles we saw.

This guy lost his front flipper

This green turtle (L) has a buoyancy deficiency so he can't clean himself but he loves when the volunteers give him a good scrub down.

Once we saw all the turtles we took a drive along the A1A and went to Juno Beach which I actually liked more than South Beach b/c (1.) there weren't any spring breakers (2.) every other person had their dog with them (3.) there were shells! It was really windy so we were glad we had gotten enough sun for 4 days in just 2 short hours in Miami (we're efficient like that!) So we did some "shelling" and then went to Captain Charlies Reef Grill for dinner. DELICIOUS!!!!

Juno Beach

I'm so glad we got to take this unexpected weekend getaway (even if the sun decided to finally show up in CT for the same weekend and heat things up to the high 60's - no we aren't bitter about that or the fact that we came home during a rain storm and haven't seen the sun since...Not bitter at all!!)