Prep: We took a LATE flight into Fort Lauderdale (FLL) instead of into Miami to get a better airfare. It's only a short 30-45 drive down I-95 to the Miami area. We took an Uber right to the hotel and checked in to the Confidante on Miami Beach using our Hyatt points. The plan was to get into town two days before the sail date to see Miami and to have an easy trip to the cruise port on the morning of the cruise. So day one starts tomorrow.
In the morning, we determined what we wanted to go see. We definitely wanted to see South Beach. My sister is in another hotel with her husband Glenn and they are staying in South Beach. Michelle has been to Miami many times, so she knew where she wanted to stay. We decided to rent a car for this day because we expected to be seeing a number of things in the island and in Miami, and parking seemed pretty easy, so it was the better solution.
We had breakfast at the hotel, which is a popular spot even for locals and people not staying there.
Then we walked around the grounds and out to the beach. Pretty nice play to stay.
We started the day by driving to the south end of the island (aka South Beach). We found a parking garage and headed to see the beautiful wide beach. It was really hot, so we just did a quick look and did not plan to spend a lot of time there / playing in the water. Instead we headed back to the main street and hit a bar which served huge expensive drinks and watched people go by. Miami South Beach is a freak show, so people watching is pretty good here. 
We circled the block, bought some souvenirs and got some needed AC, and headed to lunch at the Sugar Factory. Like everything in South Beach, Sugar Factor is expensive, but the food is good and the drinks were insane (some were smoking, some had gummies or candy on it, etc).After Sugar Factory we decided to head back to Fort Lauderdale to find the Casino and horse races. We go to Gulfstream before the first races and were able to learn how to bet and saw the horses parade before the first race. Then we headed to the stands and watched about four races.
There's a lot of stores and things to do right around the track, so we ate at a burger place (which is not there anymore (update 2019)). Shellie wanted to go to the Casino, so we went to the relatively small casino for a little while and I lost my money and Shellie won, so that was normal. We had dropped the kids off at the bowling Alley, but they couldn't bowl unsupervised, so they just played video games.
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| Jai Alai beer by Cigar City Brewing - had it in Miami and can get it many places in Austin |
We headed to another casino to meet up with Michelle and Glenn, but they had other plans. One of my goals to see in Miami was a live Jai Alai game and so we found out that the Magic City casino had live Jai Alai so we headed there. There are other places in Miami that also have it. It's cool because you can bet on the players to win, place, or show just like horse racing. After we understood the rules, we actually won a quinella in the fourth game and won almost $200 on a $2 bet. The kids loved it and Shellie got to go to the Casino.  |
| Kids and me at the Marlins game |
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| Marlins Park |
Bix and I hung out at the pool for a little bit. Tomorrow we head out on the cruise.
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| Hops 4 Teacher beer at the hotel |
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| View of Miami at night from Marlins Park |
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