How I Spent My Spring Break (or the Great Florida Road Trip): Art Deco South Beach

The next morning marked the final day of our road trip. We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at the hotel. The weather was gorgeous and the music was already pumping at some of the neighboring hotels. It was spring break after all.

Once we were done with breakfast, we had to check out of our room and store our luggage. Then we took a long walk to the Art Deco Welcome Center on Ocean Drive. I love the Art Deco period, and it makes me so happy that Miami  Beach was and is still today a city that believes in historic preservation. We took the self-guided audio tour and got to see and learn about just a sampling of South Beach's wealth of Art Deco architecture. A great number of the buildings remain small boutique hotels.

In addition to the many Art Deco buildings, Ocean Drive is also home to Amsterdam Palace aka Versace Mansion, which was the location of a seriously sad event in fashion history. 

We pretty much had all day to complete the audio tour so we took a break for lunch in the middle of our walk. Like many of the restaurants on the Lincoln Road Mall, The Cafe at Books and Books has a huge outdoor seating area. The weather was perfect for dining al fresco. I ordered "The South Beach" sandwich, which had turkey, brie, pear, watercress and mango chutney butter.

We continued on our tour and were led to a beautiful old Post Office. They sure don't make them like they used to.

We saw many more preserved Art Deco buildings. The Tiffany may have been my favorite. 

We made our way back towards our starting point, but not before seeing this cool antique car and spotting a Space Invader mosaic. There are many more around the city, but that was the only one my not-so-eagle eyes saw. 

At the end of our tour, we took a stroll through the famous Lummus Park.

Along the way, we caught of glimpse of a shirtless man skateboarding through the park with a very large snake! There were some odd glances but no one seemed to think twice about it. 

The walk led us back towards our hotel and as you can see, it was a beautiful day to be at the beach.

Our last few hours in South Beach were spent hanging by the pool. A perfect way to spend the afternoon.

The time came for us to start heading towards the airport, but we first needed to grab some food at Joe's Takeaway. We enjoyed a few crab claws from this Miami institution. 

But wait, there's more. Key lime pie served as our last taste of Florida.

And we drove to the airport with this sunset bidding us farewell. Until we meet again, Florida!

To see more photos from Florida, visit my Flickr page.

The Cafe at Books and Books
927 Lincoln Road
Miami Beach, FL 33139 

Joe's Takeaway
11 Washington Avenue
Miami Beach, FL 33139

Week in Review (April 29 to May 5, 2013)

Done with business school after 33 long months!! Now, I can get my life back. I can't tell you how good it feels to not have schoolwork.

My left foot has been feeling strange since the middle of last week and I was afraid that I had aggravated it more by running and doing that difficult yoga class over the weekend. I had an appointment with my doctor on Wednesday, so I decided to hold off on doing more workouts until I got the okay from her.

It turns out that I have a nerve contusion. Contusion is a fancy word for bruise so it will eventually go back to feeling normal without me having to do anything. My doc also gave me the okay to continue my workouts.



Monday: rest
Tuesday: rest
Wednesday: rest
Thursday: rest
Friday: 1 hour yoga class
Saturday: ran 3.15 miles
Sunday: 45 minutes Pilates chair at-home

Total mileage this week: 3.15 miles
Total mileage this year: 126.1 miles

Before business school, I had a pretty decent yoga practice that completely disappeared once school started. I started practicing yoga on a casual basis almost ten years ago. It always made me feel so good and strong. One of my goals now that I am done with school is to build up a consistent practice again. For now, that means once a week.

*Images: Source*

How I Spent My Spring Break (or the Great Florida Road Trip): Welcome to Miami

After our night in Homestead, we made our way to Miami proper, the final stop in our travels around Florida and coincidentally the same place we started. Our first destination was Little Havana's La Camaronera Seafood Joint and Fish Market for lunch. I was starving because our hotel apparently starts clearing the breakfast area 15 minutes before breakfast ends. No fair.

I ordered fried fish roe for a starter, just because I was really curious to try them. It turned out to be a huge portion and not exactly to my taste. But I was super happy with my lobster sandwich. Soft bread, tons of onions and some special sauce. Oh yeah, and the lobster was good too.

We walked around Little Havana for a few hours afterwards, taking in the sights and sounds. Raisin Bread picked up a cool Cuban fedora and we watched the guys playing dominoes in Maximo Gomez Park.

We still had a few hours to kill before we could check into our hotel so we ventured over to the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, the former home of industrialist James Deering. It is now owned by the county and can host all of your wedding or quinceanera needs. We weren't able to take photos inside, but the exterior gives you a good idea of how lavish the interior is.

Wouldn't I love to have this as my swimming pool!

What had to be my favorite area of the grounds though was the stone barge. So beautiful. 

The gardens were also stunning. Throughout our time wandering the gardens, we saw couples awkwardly taking engagement photos and little girls in big girl dresses posing for their quinceanera pictures. To be fair, I'm sure they wound up with amazing photos at Villa Vizcaya.

We were able to check in at our hotel a little while later. We stayed at the South Seas Hotel, right on Collins Avenue in South Beach. We were right in the thick of things and I felt like we needed to be in order to really have the SoBe experience.

For dinner, we walked to Espanola Way and had some light French fare at A La Folie Cafe. I had the French onion soup and a salade nicoise.

We spent the remainder of the evening watching the craziness of South Beach by taking a long walk along the Lincoln Road Mall and Ocean Drive.

South Beach is quite an eyefull. I also discovered something that I have never seen before in my life. Apparently, this is called a Bulldog Margarita. It looks like it definitely serves a purpose...for evil. Just kidding, not judgments here. But I, for one, did not partake. 

Source

We finally settled on ending the night by consuming more food at La Sandwicherie. I wish I had one of these in my neighborhood. They have a ridiculously fast sandwich maker in their employ and make terrific, tasty and customizable sandwiches for your late night pleasure.

With our bellies stuffed and our tootsies tired out, these old fogies hit the hay soon after. Young'uns, go on without us!

To see more photos of Miami, visit my Flickr set

La Camaronera Seafood Joint & Fish Market
1952 West Flagler Street
Miami, FL 33135

A La Folie Cafe
516 Espanola Way
Miami Beach, FL 33139

La Sandwicherie
229 14th Street
Miami Beach, FL 33139

How I Spent My Spring Break (or the Great Florida Road Trip): Winter Homes and Alligators

After our amazing manatee snorkel trip, we drove south. We planned to end our day at a hotel in Naples. On the way, we decided to make a stop at the Edison and Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers. We arrived with just enough time to see the property, but unfortunately, were not able to spend much time in the museum.

Thomas Edison purchased this winter retreat in the late 1890s and his friend, Henry Ford, eventually bought the property next door in the 1910s. Edison's property had beautiful furnishings and was dotted with many of his inventions.

The properties sit on the Caloosahatchee River and the grounds host acres and acres of botanic gardens. 

The Moonlight Garden was my favorite space on the property. I can imagine what a beautiful place it would be to be at night.

The gardens are composed of thousands of varieties of plants, trees and flowers, including huge banyan trees, orchids and the biggest bougainvillea bush I've ever seen. 

Another cool part of the property is Edison's botanic research laboratory. Even after he found great success with his inventions, he never stopped working. 

After a night in the worst hotel of our entire trip, we drove to Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge's Marsh Trail, where we were able to view the landscape from an observation tower. 

While we didn't see any alligators, we did see herons and plenty of fish. 

Next we found ourselves walking along the Big Cypress Bend Boardwalk in Big Cypress National Preserve. Again, no gators here but there was some lovely foliage. 

We made our lunch stop at Joanie's Blue Crab Cafe. Apparently, the paper ran an article on them a day or two before because they could not stop moaning about how slammed they were and how unprepared they were for the crowds and it showed.

I tried to order the soft-shell crab sandwich, which they didn't have. Instead, I got the crab cake sandwich. My bun was burned and partly inedible, but the crab cake and fries were outstanding.

After lunch, we finally found ourselves in gator land. Just driving along 41, you can see tons and tons of alligators, swimming, sunning and just hanging around. It was really really cool to see them in nature, doing what alligators do. 

We tried to make it all the way to the Shark Valley Visitor Center, but we had booked ourselves on to an afternoon airboat tour, which we had to get to. This is something we would soon regret.

I hated our airboat tour! If you want to go zooming around through mangrove swamp at high speeds on a loud, eco-unfriendly machine with animal harassing guides, go for it, but I really wished we hadn't done this. Raisin Bread thought at one point I was going to start yelling at our guide. Instead of being there, I would have much rather been continuing to drive along the dirt roads, looking for alligators. By the way, the only animal we saw on the airboat tour was a single gator.

Here we are trying to pretend like we're having fun. Again, if I didn't make it clear, I do not recommend you go on an airboat tour.

We wound down the day with another two and a half hour drive to Homestead, Florida for the night.

To see more photos of the Edison and Ford Winter Estates, click here
To see more photos of the alligators, click here

Joanie's Blue Crab Cafe
39395 Tamiami Trail E
Ochopee, FL 34141

Week in Review (April 22 to 28, 2013)

I'm entering my last week of business school and I can't wait to be done! What will I do now that I will "only" be working?

I was able to do a couple of things to relax last week. On Monday, I took advantage of SpaWeek and got a massage and foot scrub.

The week also wound up having a few firsts for me. On Wednesday, I saw an acupuncturist for the first time and it was an interesting experience. Not sure how I feel about it yet, but I have more appointments scheduled so I should be able to form an opinion rather quickly. On Saturday, I signed up for a Yoga for Runners class that wound up being a level 2 hot yoga class tailored towards runners. I had never been to a hot yoga class before. Needless to say, it was brutal and uncomfortable but for some reason, I am tempted to attend another class. Yesterday, I volunteered at my first race, the Inaugural DC Nike Women's Half Marathon.

I was handing out mylar blankets at the finish line from 10 am until the last runner came through.

I signed up to volunteer with a bunch of people from a Meetup running group, but this was the first time I had attended an event. We wound up finishing much early than we were expecting, and they were nice enough to invite the newcomer to lunch with them at Burger Tap and Shake in Foggy Bottom.

I had the house burger and a cookies and cream shake. Yummy.

  
Here's what my workouts for the week looked like:

Monday: rest
Tuesday: ran 2.9 miles
Wednesday: rest
Thursday: rest
Friday: ran 3.0 miles
Saturday: walked 3.8 miles + 1 hour and 15 minute hot yoga class
Sunday: rest

I was seriously considering signing up for another half marathon during Memorial Day weekend but have decided against it for a number of reasons. The main reason is that I just need to chill out and stop pushing myself so hard to constantly be doing more and more. Relaxing is very difficult for me and it is something that I hope I can work on this summer. So now, I am modifying my training schedule with Dumbo as my goal. Hopefully, that will give me some time to cross train more and focus on stretching.

Have a great week!

Burger Tap and Shake
2200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20007

How I Spent My Spring Break (or the Great Florida Road Trip): Manatees

Who knew that one of the best experiences of my life would take place during our impromptu trip to Florida? 

Our morning called for a pre-dawn wake up that included packing up our belongings and driving an hour and a half to the city of Crystal River for a 6:15 am snorkeling trip with the most amazing and beloved creatures this side of Giant Pandas. Yes, folks, we swam with manatees! 

I am still excited as I'm typing this. We chose River Ventures as our guides because of their terrific reviews on TripAdvisor. My travel planning relies heavily on TripAdvisor in general, but it became an even greater source of information on this trip as we were doing everything on the fly.

When we arrived at River Ventures, we had a chance to enjoy some hot coffee and breakfast pastries. We watched a video required by the Fish and Wildlife Service that detailed how to interact with the manatees. Before we knew it, we were changing into our wetsuits and boarding our boat to the springs. 

It was still dark out, but as we approached the springs, the sun was beginning to peek over the tree line. 

The anticipation was killing me. Finally, we were able to offload but we still had to wait until everyone in the group was comfortable before we could enter the springs as quiet as mice. Our patience paid off because we were treated to about a dozen manatees of all sizes. 

How can you not love this face? 

Most of them were still sleeping so we had to be extra careful not to startle them. It took me a while to realize that these gentle guys and gals weren't going to lunge at me, so I began the excursion viewing them from a safe distance. 

The experience was so peaceful. I just wanted to hang out with them all day.  

Once I was comfortable enough, I ventured closer to them. That's me with the red noodle. Our guide was also our trip photographer. Thanks, Captain Donovan!

Before our trip was over, I was even able to give our friends a friendly pet.

By the end of our excursion, everyone had already returned to the boat except for me, our Captain and a English woman who was going to swim with the manatees three days in a row. If that doesn't tell you how much I enjoyed the experience, maybe this will:

That night we were laying in bed watching tv when an old episode of The Daily Show came on. It included this segment! Yes, that's where we were and that's even the same woman who gave us our safety briefing. So funny. Riding manatees, not so funny.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Tea Party Manatee-Riding Patriots
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Indecision Political Humor The Daily Show on Facebook