We were so excited to be heading to Miami at the beginning of the month for the National Championship game. We dropped the kids at my SO GENEROUS in-laws on Friday for them to start their fun with KayKay and GrandDavid! I want to start this post out by thanking them and will probably end it with thanking them too! Without their willingness to keep the kids we couldn’t get away and we really needed to get away. So thank you so much Kay and David for being so generous with your time! We really, really, really appreciate it!
The biggest uncertainty about leaving Charlotte and James was that James had a fever. Yes, Mom of the Year over here left her son to go out of town for fun when he had a fever. But in my defense, Charlotte had had the same fever virus the weekend before and James’ had run on the exact same track as hers. The doctor didn’t want him to come in because of the flu and there wasn’t really anything that we could do anyway. So we just loaded him up with tylenol and sent all our meds to Kay and David’s.
Leaving on Friday was painful. It included watching Charlotte try and open up the storm door to run after us while screaming. Not a pretty sight. But, like I knew she would, she had a great time with Kay and David and so did James! We started our vacation off with dinner at Full Moon….yum!
We got up bright and early on Saturday morning to get everything ready and get to our plane. We ended up leaving Tuscaloosa around 11 am and had a perfect flight to Miami.
When we landed the skies were so blue that we almost didn’t know what was going on. After all, we hadn’t seen a blue sky since before Christmas in Alabama! Once we got home and didn’t see blue sky for another few weeks I was even more thankful for our trip down south!
We started our vacation in Miami with a welcoming reception at the hotel and some wonderful cocktails that I forgot what the name was and what was in them (sorry!) but they were good.
We were very impressed when we got to our room! We had heard that
The Fountainbleau had computer’s in each room but we didn’t believe it but, sure enough, we found a Mac sitting on the desk in our room. We also had a corner room which gave us some more sitting space which was very nice since I think we both read at least a few books while we were gone!
We took a trek down to the boardwalk in front of the beach after getting settled so that we could see it. I wasn’t ready to venture into a bathing suit in the middle of the winter so we weren’t sure if we would spend any time on the beach and wanted to make sure we saw it. The boardwalk was crowded with lots of Bama fans which was fun. And we saw Coach Cochran walk by while we were out there too!
We enjoyed dinner that night at
Gotham Steak. It was a neat restaurant that impressed us with having it’s whole bar menu on individual iPad’s that they brought to the table. We don’t have that kind of technology in North Alabama yet! Our food was good and if you’re ever there make sure you savor the bread and the mac and cheese side dish.
After dinner we headed up to check out Mom and Dad’s room and admire some more of the hotel. It is a pretty famous landmark and was used in the filming of at least one Bond movie, Goldfinger, and has been used in many other tv shows and movies.
We heard that it was rumored that each chandelier in the lobby cost a million dollars!
The iconic bowtie floor
This was the hallway to our room. It was curved like the building which was neat.
On Sunday we slept late and then headed to South Beach. I detailed our lunch at
Yardbird a little while ago, but I’ll say again that it was a phenomenal meal and I highly recommend it if you’re in Miami!
I’m going to stop this post here since there were lots of pictures and lots more to come! The rest of our trip from Sunday night until our arrival home coming up tomorrow!
