Pizza, Wings and Stranger Things 2019 Day 2

[wizzo]

Day Two – 12th August 2019

THE INDEX IS HERE

I know a lot of you reading this know exactly what I’m going to say here because you’ve all lived it many times, we didn’t sleep right through till morning on first night here, in fact I awoke at 3am. This was largely thanks to ‘Kinde Girl’ next to me. If you recall, yesterday started with Lynn’s ‘One up, All up’ mantra too! It was ok though, we were soon asleep again (which is rare for us).

We woke up properly at 5:15am which isn’t too bad for a first morning. The kids woke up at 6am having had a ‘Solid 8’. TV weather forecast told me that Florida still had the out of character West to East flow meaning the gulf coast had been drawing moisture in from the gulf and had been downright miserable at times for a few weeks. Luckily for us, we weren’t on the gulf coast (but we were heading that way in a few days).

We all got up and dressed. I had cleverly suggested we packed a first day bag (a small suitcase) for today before we left so we didn’t have to open a suitcase case proper until we had a settled base for the first few days. This spectacularly backfired when we realised that none of Lauren’s clothes were in it. Days earlier I’d asked for everyone to put clothes for the first day bag in a separate pile to the rest of the packing to avoid the situation. This clearly didn’t happen and because I hadn’t spotted that there weren’t any ‘Lauren clothes’ in the pile, it was all my fault because I’d packed! Come on ladies, I’m a bloke, they all look the same to me!

So, we cracked open one of the large cases and retrieved some clothes for Lauren. I do always spread the clothes around multiple cases just in case one gets lost/delayed in transit. Doing this means everyone has some clothes. If you pack ‘your’ clothes in ‘your’ case and it goes missing ‘you’ have no clothes. You can have that travel tip for free.

Disaster averted, me and the kids threw some clothes on and set off to go and forage some breakfast. Breakfast was a bit of a flash point too as (coming off the back of being accused of packing badly) I had to listen to Lynn say “We might have a coffee in a bit eh?” about 10 times while I got ready despite spending the previous couple of weeks at home on her high horse saying “I don’t drink coffee anymore, do you know, I don’t think I ever actually liked it”. It’s not easy biting your lip when you’re a bloke sometimes.

Undeterred by the morning’s pontifications, me and the kids set off to secure something for breakfast. You may remember that we are still very much in Miami International Airport at this point so we are scouring the concourse, passing check-in desks and checking out all of the airport food outlets as we search. While walking around the terminal building, I realise that we’ve been in Florida for a good 10 hours now and we’ve spent all that time in an air conditioning. Being on the ‘land side’ of things in the airport, we dived out of an exit just to stand, feel the warm and smell the air. Strangely, despite being to Florida many times before, It was one of those moments I will always remember from our many trips to the Sunshine State.



Having spent all of 30 seconds outside we plumbed for Dunkin’ Donuts for breakfast and bought a dozen, juice and ‘coffee’.



The lady on the local weather was telling people that with feels like temperatures in the region of 106-109 to avoid direct sunshine. Our thoughts on that were “Are you joking love?! We haven’t come all this way to avoid sunlight, we’re not sodding vampires!”

We were soon packed up and heading through the airport to the car rental centre that was a short moving walkway/tram ride away.



I’d booked the car through Virgin Holidays which felt weird as I hadn’t booked a flight or accommodation with them but it worked really well, it was an Alamo rental and was a lot cheaper than the usual companies I’d rented from in the past. I nipped any talk of upgrades/extras in the bud and we were soon on our way. I chose a Ford Edge again from the line based purely on the fact that they have Apple CarPlay. Gone are the days of Mustangs and Camaros everybody, it’s not worth the ear ache over the lack of space! I failed to take a photo in the dingy parking garage but you get the idea and it turns up in a photo of the villa later.

We left the airport and headed to a nearby Walmart Supercenter for beach chairs and an umbrella. I have a Walmart account and have done their version of ‘Click and Collect’ many times before but when I looked at the stock online before we left the UK the week before they had tons, so I didn’t bother. I even knew which aisle they were in prior to getting there. Once in the store I confidently approached the aisle only to find no beach chairs and no umbrellas. I flagged down an employee who informed me that ‘Summer was over and they had removed them all earlier in the week to make room for Halloween stuff”. I informed him that it was 96 degrees outside and summer very much wasn’t over but he wasn’t having it and certainly wasn’t going out the back to find beach stuff.

We consoled ourselves by buying junk food, t-shirts and water (the essentials). We would do a proper shop once we were in the villa in a few days’ time.



From Walmart we drove over to South Beach and trusted Lynn with photos of the journey.















We were staying at the Washington Park Hotel on Washington Avenue which is just 1 street back from Ocean Drive (so in the heart of South Beach). Having picked the car up at 8am we were VERY early to be able to check-in and I’d rang the hotel from Walmart to enquire about luggage storage and the possibility of an early check-in. Check-in before 12 was an additional fee (no chance) and check-in between 12-4pm was free but only if a room was available.

Parking at South Beach is limited and generally expensive. I’d done my homework before I set off and there was a multi storey on the next block from the hotel that was in the same building as the police station so we drove straight there and parked up. Long stay in here was $20 per 24 hours which is as cheap as you will find at South Beach. I toyed with getting an Uber from the airport and picking a car up a couple of days later but the Alamo office in South Beach was tiny and would have had limited choice and it’s always nice to have wheels if you do have a change of plan.

Once at the hotel we stored the luggage and set off for a wander around South Beach (SoBe). If you have been to SoBE before, our hotel was about a 30 second walk from Versace’s old house. We spent the morning acquainting ourselves with Ocean Drive and all it’s Art Deco vistas.























Maddy and I like our cars and Miami really is a mecca for supercars. They are always going up and down ‘the strip’ and we even saw a Lamborghini in Walmart earlier.

In the photo below though, someone had ruined a perfectly good Ferrari with a hideous red gold wrap’.



Something that has amazed me in recent years is the explosion of the chain of stores ‘Surf Style’. Go anywhere near a beach in Florida and there will be a Surf Style. Not only will there be ‘A’ Surf Style, there will be multiple Surf Styles sometimes only yards apart. Fair play to them, they have saturated the market so much that you can’t buy a pair of swimmers of some tat any where else. On our tour of SoBE we must have been in four different Surf Style shops and we were only on foot. There are 7 in total in South Beach and it’s not a big place.





We were all starving at this point and dropped into BurgerFi for lunch which wasn’t far from the hotel. We had seen @davidsbeenhere review this burger joint on YouTube many weeks prior and we weren’t disappointed.

I had the CEO burger, Lynn had the Bacon Cheeseburger and the kids both had regular cheeseburgers.











This place isn’t cheap but the burgers are excellent and this was a great first proper meal of the holiday. They are opening branches all the time (including two within spitting distance of WDW).

We went back to the hotel after lunch to see if a room was available yet but we were out of luck. We passed some time playing Badminton, yes you heard that right.













After a brief rain delay in the Badminton, we walked down to Walgreen with 4pm rapidly approaching to get some travel sickness tablets for the journey home (apparently American ones are a lot better than ours?). We also bought some beer for the room.

Back at the hotel and our room still wasn’t ready so we played pool and draughts to kill yet more time. Draughts though! We really were desperately killing time. To be fair, it was raining outside so we weren’t missing out on sunbathing.





Eventually, 4pm rolled around and we got a room. In time honoured tradition I laid on the bed, drank a beer and watched sport while the girls faffed about.



After a wash and brush up we headed out to tea (dinner) despite it not even being 5pm! We were hungry again with stomachs still on UK time. We didn’t have to go far as across the street from us is the 11th Street Diner (featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives).

It is a traditional railway carriage diner that serves real food.





I had the signature dish that was Guy Fieri had on DDD which was the Apple Raisin Pork Chops which was lovely. Not fine dining, more really good home cooking. Lynn and Lauren both had the southern fried chicken. Maddy had a South Beach classic, the Cuban Sandwich.











It was a lovely meal. As I said really wholesome home cooking but like everything else in South Beach, it was expensive coming in at $118 with drinks and signature shakes for the kids for desserts.





There was an almighty thunderstorm as we finished up and it would linger long enough to write off any thoughts of having a stroll along Ocean Drive tonight as it lasted all evening.

We paid and made a break for the hotel, sprinting across the road on the first available ‘walk’ sign.

Back at the hotel we settled down to have couple of beers and some TV. The highlight of the TV that evening was Beat Shazam which was very much like our Saturday night show ‘The Hit List’ but better.

Having been up for 16 hours, that was the end of our day with everyone being sound asleep by 9pm.

Tomorrow – Beach, I drop a bollock, Wynwood Walls and Lincoln Road.

[ziggyzag]

Regretting we didn't spend the day in Miami when we went last year, we flew in stayed overnight and drove straight to Orlando at 7 am. Maybe next year we will stay for a day

[Milner]

Great day

[yellowrose78]

Great day, we stayed in South Beach in July for one night before our cruise and it rained most of the time we were there too. Ocean Drive is stunning though, we loved seeing Versace's house and watching all the cars going up and down. The girls are looking so grown up, looking forward to your next day

[darbs]

South beach looks lovely, we have flown into Miami 3 times but always driven up to Orlando first thing the next day, maybe next time we will spend some time in Miami...

[Floridafour]

South beach looks fab 🙂
Your girls are growing up and look lovely. I look forward to reading more.

[JoJo88]

Fab day! Loved Miami but my God it was sooooo hot. Or bloody raining! Pretty sure we must’ve rolled past your hotel if you were near the Versace pad #segwayw*nkers

Looking forward to finding out which bollock you dropped

[walt4it]

Got to love an early start to the day on holiday
We stayed in South Beach last year and also enjoyed the lovely little diner - we sat at the same table too I found all of Miami way too expensive and was glad to get further North to avoid the additional costs.
Shame the hotel made you wait around so long for your room.
Great photos of the art deco buildings - they really are something else to see, along with the range of cars in the area too - intrigued as to which bollock you dropped on the next day

[margyloveswdw]

Great first day!

[mick]

Good first day

Joan