Little photo dump of our Fort Lauderdale/Miami/Key West trip. What started out as a three week back to back business trip in Florida became a no brainer to bring Darren along with me and make use of the long weekends instead of flying back and forth between California and Florida. Oh and we do love us some quality Jim and Sam time…
Weekend 1 was Fort Lauderdale, starting off with a bar crawl in classic Floridian style, via the hop on hop off water taxi.
Sam and I were given some lovely yellow roses, it being Mother’s Day. Not that either of us are mothers, but that’s just a tiny insignificant detail. Wilting in the heat and humidity, I thought they were destined for nowhere other than the bin. But oh no, Jim tenderly carried those babies home and Sam’s green fingers and a bit of love and attention brought them back to life.
Weekend 2 was Key West and I was very happy to tick off one of my Must Sees as we stopped at a harbor along the way. There in the water, bumbling away as if he had all the time in the world, was the ocean’s gentle giant of a manatee, popping up to see if we had any spare donuts going.
Why stay in a hotel or a motel in Key West when you can stay on a boat? Points for novelty factor (and double bonus points for air conditioning – at the risk of being like a broken record, I find the heat and humidity in Florida in the summer a tad stifling). The hosts had left lots of useful signs for us, indicating to not touch this or that or to give directions on how things worked. The most useful one was Cold Beer here. True Story! What a welcome 🙂
Speaking of boats, the Keys scene pretty much revolves around watercraft, so we did not just one but two sunset boat tours, and Darren also squeezed in a couple of hours on a jetski.
Meanwhile, we rented a couple of bikes for the few days we were in the Keys. We did lots of riding, as it’s pretty much the only type of exercise you could bear to do in that heat. Luckily, there were bike paths aplenty, a good thing as we soon realized it was too hot even to wear a helmet.
And like all the best bike rides, beer and tacos were on the agenda.
The drive back up from the Keys to Fort Lauderdale was another story entirely. Horrendous torrential rain resulted in having to pull off the road and sit it out. Only to eventually join the long traffic jam on the single lane highway as the rain finally eased off and everyone else had the same idea and timing.
Back in Miami and back to work for a week. This did at least involve an evening of socializing at Top Golf. Let’s just say I won’t be going pro any time soon.
Found a nice Spanish restaurant and tapas bar just down the road from the hotel.
And then would you know it, it’s Darren’s birthday whilst we’re in Miami. So we pushed the boat out with a celebratory omakase meal at Rakki Sushi. Sooo good!
