As I sit here on Day 11 of The 15-Day Vacation, it occurs to me that no one ever got to hear much about our trip to Miami Beach over Thanksgiving. A gross oversight! Allow me to expound...
My darling wife, based on a previous trip of her own, recommended the Trump International Sonesta Beach Resort. Who was I to argue? The man clearly knowns his Sonesta. Or something. At any rate, we took off Wednesday morning at the ass-crack of dawn, and after a couple of short flights and a long and sometimes fear-inducing taxi cab ride, we arrived.
Check in was a breeze, and we went up to our room of the 20th floor. As we entered our ocean-view room, we noticed that--despite it being a non-smoking hotel--someone had clearly been smoking in our room. A lot. The concierge brought our bags in, and we asked him if we might switch. Within five minutes, we were headed up to the 21st floor, and an identical room. High marks for The Donald on customer service.
I ventured out onto the balcony, and saw:
Nice. I LOVE me some ocean views. Being severely afraid of heights, it took me awhile to look down. But, once I did, I saw some even better stuff:
Two jacuzzis, a large pool, beach chairs with attendants (I love the little flagpole/flag thing they give you... if you're thirsty, raise the flag. The waiter will be by directly). Melissa and I spent some time for two days down on the beach, and even though the weather wasn't the greatest, it is still always nice to lay by the ocean.
On Thanksgiving, I forced myself to workout, even if just for a little bit. We decided to make a reservation down in South Beach for dinner. The Concierge at the Trump gave us many options, and in the end, we settled on Mark's South Beach:
The hotel ran a free shuttle down to South Beach (the hotel was decidedly north of SB), and so we went down a bit early to get the lay of the land, neither of us having been there before. Because we're idiots, we took no pictures. We had a drink at Finnegan's Way on Ocean Blvd before dinner
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just for shits and giggles, and because I like me some Irish joints.
Our Mark's reservation approached, and so we went over to check it out. They had a Thanksgiving special which included turkey (gotta have turkey), and all in all we did our best to stuff ourselves completely rotten. Everything from the drinks, wine, soup, salad, main course, and dessert was spectacular.
We decided to walk down Ocean Blvd. again on South Beach to see what it was like after dark. Considering it was a holiday, we were surprised at how many people were out, and I was surprised/a little disgusted at how many people got their pictures taken at the gate/front steps of the Versace mansion where Gianni Versace was brutally killed in 1997:
Maybe it's just the attraction to famous people, and/or I'm reading WAY too much into it all, but whatever.
The restaurants, bars, and clubs were all sufficiently croweded, and all of the restaurants had seating out on the sidewalk, and had samples of food as well as hosts/hostesses out trying desperately to get you to eat at their restaurants. This would come in handy on Friday.
We went back to the hotel, sipped some wine on our balcony, and enjoyed the view and the ocean.
Friday took us back to lounging on the beach, and eventually back to South Beach for dinner. We meandered up and down Ocean Blvd. to find a place to eat, eventually settling on this nice little Italian place called Hosteria Romana. There seemed to be a server/busser-to-patron ration of 762-1, but it was certainly entertaining, as ALL of the service people spoke Italian. In fact, our busser spoke so little English that, when we asked her what was in the olive oil they served with their bread, she stumbled to find the word "garlic" in her English vocabulary. The food was amazing, though extremely rich. We ate right up next to the sidewalk and watched the people stroll by as the night came on:
Finally, we opted to find a place to have one last drink in South Beach, and Melissa persuaded me to go to Mango's Tropical Cafe. Wow. Imagine if the B-squad from Hooters all got spandex unitards and starting working at Margaritaville after hours. Or, better yet, think 5 parts Latin strip club, 2 parts salsa dancing bar:
Really, the self-portrait of us taken at Mango's says it all:
Finally, on Saturday, we packed up and headed for home. Our plane was very late leaving Florida, and when we got to Pittsburgh we missed our connection (no thanks to you, US Airways). I forced myself to eat some Quaker Steak and Lube wings and drink a Yuengling while we waited for our next flight some 2 hours later. By the time we got home, we were worn out.
And someone was not only happy to see us, but let us know that the next time we go, we aren't going without him:
2 comments:
damn... between these posts and analyzing/doing research for one of the longer posts in Dog Pound history, I've come to the conclusion that your office must have been suffering from the same numbness as mine.
i wonder if this was one of the more non-productive work days in Ohio history.
i forgot to add this in earlier... but regarding your 'thanksgiving workout'... some of us ran a 10K that morning asshole.
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