Second home away from home

My favorite way to find places to stay is VRBO.  Vacation Rentals by owner.  I find so many amazing deals everywhere I go.  I use that way more than hotels.  Well, Miami was so frustrating!  It was so hard to find somewhere to stay.  It was full of con-artists and shysters.  I was so lucky to finally find this place but it was booked!  I was so sad.  It is a pool house on the back of someones 3 acre lot.  After I found the other hotel for 4 days I called this lady again to see if we could do a partial week and it ended up the people were leaving early and it would work out perfectly.



 

We were so pleased with how beautiful it was and how welcoming and warm the owners were.  We had full use of the pool and this large beautiful spot!  It was far from the beach so we never did see it again except when we drove down to Key West.  We did all the other parts of Miami like the Everglades, Key West and Monkey Jungle.  So it worked out perfect.  I hope to go back and stay at this same house.

 

It was so pretty inside.  They had built it and their daughter had lived in it with her family while she finished school.  It was nice to have this home away from home.

 

 

The master bedroom was huge!  I don't think this picture justifies how huge.  That was a king size bed and it looks little in there.  This is where I had my first attack that started my downward spiral of health problems.  Now 5 months later I finally have some answers. 

 

 



Ocean Drive Fun!

 

 

 

Here it is, the famous Ocean Drive!  I looked for movie stars but never saw any.  We took a double decker bus tour and had so much fun!  It was so interesting to learn all about Miami.  There are a lot of movie stars that make it their home.

 



 

The board walk.  I love these.  They were everywhere leading you to the most amazing beach!

 

 

That is London and me in the distance.  We rented these Deco bikes which were such a great way to get around.  All over Miami Beach you could rent these bikes.  They were self serve. You just put in your money and a bike would be released from the locks.  You then could drop them off any where there were the stands and pick them up again after you were done shopping.  It was so fun!

 



 

When ever we go somewhere I am so thrilled to see palm tree's.  I never tire of it!  I wish I could grow one in my back yard!

 

 

Tree hugger that shaves her legs!

 



 

Me and my honey!  I should have hidden behind the tree, isn't that a sure way to look skinnier?  I hate pictures of me but then I hate when I don't have any pictures of me.  Sigh....

I just love these two!  They are the best of friends.  So much alike.  I get spoiled by both!

 



 

More of the walk way.  Tons of people out and about. 

Art Deco buildings

 



 

Another day of biking.

 





Miami Nights

 

It was so fun after laying on the beach all day to shower and go down to Lincoln Avenue which is famous food and great shopping.

 



 

 

Miami Beach is famous for its Art Deco neighbourhoods.  The buildings were so amazing.  Some were still run down but they are in the process of updating everything.  It was fun to do at night and see the way each hotel was lit up. 

 



 

Many hotels were swanky despite their age.  You should have seen all the Ferrari's, Lamborghini's and other fancy cars driving around.  Sean was always ohh.. and awww....everywhere telling me how expensive and how fast that car was.



 

 

 

The corner of Lincoln Rd where all the shopping was.  We had the most amazing steak dinner down here!  Yummy.  I regret that we didn't eat there on our last night. We tried somewhere different and it was yucky!  The number of people walking at night was crazy!  Each restaurant was packed.  It was fun to sit right on the street side and watch people walking around.  It was so expensive though!  I was shocked at the prices of food.

 



 

 

Sean picked up this tee-shirt and showed it to me and said it would be perfect for my dad.  I was shocked! Why that one?  Well, it was so funny as it wasn't the one he had picked out. He grabbed a different one by accident!  lol  Needless to say we didn't bring that one back for dad!

 



 

Look at the cuties I found down on the strip?  Pretty cute huh?  Besides Sean's shirt.  I have no control over his shirts, the louder the better in his mind.  Between his t-shirts and his Hawaiian shirts I can always pick him out of a crowd!

Each entry was so cool!  I could just imagine the movie stars in the 70's walking out of these places.

Here is some of the cool architecture in our hotel the Shelborne.  It was so fun!

 



 

Movie star pose

Can you tell that Sean is sick of me taking pictures?  We walked for miles on this vacation.  It was so much fun!

 



More beach days

This is Sean shelling for us.  There was a shelf just out a ways that the shells got stuck on.  He is such a water and beach bum!  We would both love to be close to an ocean.

I love the sand!  So fun to see your footprints!

Beach beauty!

I love this picture!  The ocean is amazing!

Sean found a float in the water he played with that thing for a couple of miles I am sure!  If we weren't on a plane we would have brought it home with our other treasures!

This is the life!  If I were a multimillionaire (I remember thinking a million dollars would be so much but in today's economy it doesn't get you much so I have to be a multimillionaire for my dream life!) (not that I wouldn't love a million dollars!) I would live by the beach and hang out each morning. 

I love the reflections in her glasses!

Our little friend!  He was quick it was a good thing I snapped the picture when I did!

I have a lovely bunch of Coconuts!

These cool chairs were at our resort.  This is first thing in the morning when we went out to beach comb so we didn't really do our hair and get fancied up.  We found a guy selling coconuts.  I am pretty sure it is people who live on the beach.  They just pick the coconuts along the boardwalk.    

They weren't very good!  I was hoping for they would be yummy.  I think they were way to green!  It was still fun to drink out of a coconut!

Look at this cutie!

Beachcombing

 

 

This was our favorite thing to do every morning.  We arrived on Monday evening so we went right down to the beach and made plans for the morning to come back.  It was so funny. London wanted to be up by 7am combing the beach.  I think we got down there at 8:00.  We had so much fun.  The first day we just found bits of shells and lots of normal little shells; nothing special.  These pictures are of our second day when we really got serious!

 



We were up early, bought a beach bag and were ready to go!  We turned left this time and went down the other way.  Wowzers!, did we have good shelling.  At first we were picking up everything on the edge.   We found some amazing coral bits everywhere.  There must have been lots of coral deeper in.  We didn't go far.  Remember the shark warnings?

 



Look at all the shells!  It was so much fun looking for treasures.  Everything we found we had to show off and ooh and aah over.  These little shells were everywhere; much more than were on the other side.

 



 

This was during reading week, our vacation in February. They were having the Food Network's food and wine fair.  I was hoping to see Guy and Rachel or maybe Martha and Emeril but I didn't see any of them!  It was neat to see all the white tents going up everywhere though.

 

We found this little guy...poor little thing.  It was a cool looking fish.  He had a rough night.  We also saw a huge sea slug.  I know we took pictures but I can't find them now.  It was still alive so Sean  got brave enough and threw it back in. 

 

I wish we could have brought this home.  I bet it would have dried well.  Isn't it amazing?!  We found some pretty amazing pieces of coral that we did haul home.  I bet our bag weighed over 20 lbs by the time we finished.

 

This was our first really good shell find!  We were so excited! 

We figured out that just at the edge of the surf there was a big drop off and when you looked in you could see great shells!  So we started wading into the water.  Sean went back to the hotel and got his snorkel stuff and swam for hours finding good stuff for us!  It was funny, we were planning on just going for a little walk and looking for shells but we were gone around 4 hours!  We weren't dressed for it and I didn't have sun screen on so I burnt so bad!  I was so sad I had to stay out of the sun for a few days!

 



 

Look how wet London got!  She would see a shell and in she would go bending to get it only to have a wave come in and soak her.  We started going in and taking huge handfuls of sand and then sifting it to find shells.  We found so many!  I loved this one, especially the color but it still had an occupant so we played with it for a while and then threw it back in.

 

Cool huh!  Don't you love the droplet?  I love the eyes too!  It creeped me out just holding it.

 

My feet were so sore going back from the sand we decided to walk on the board walk instead!  By now I realized I was burnt and was hurting.

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Look at the cute Canadian Surf bums I found!