Welcome to Miami!
What a wonderful weekend Matt and I had playing in Florida. As I mentioned, Matt’s been working down there for a few weeks and will continue to do so until the end of the year, so he was able to fly me down on his company for a little weekend mini-vacay. Awesome!
We stayed at the beautiful JW Marriott Marquis — stunning hotel right in downtown Miami. Check out the view from our hotel room!
I arrived on Friday late afternoon and after enjoying the view from our room and a glass of wine at the hotel, we headed out on the town! Miami is such a cool city — so much energy and culture, I love it! Sometimes I thought we were in South America, not the U.S. — if I ever lived here I would need to learn Spanish. 🙂
I didn’t get any pictures of the food because it was so dark, but Matt and I went to a fabulous Italian place for dinner with a ton of outdoor seating and fun live music, too.
The roof of the restaurant was open! Cool.
On Saturday morning, we decided to enjoy some of the hotel amenities. Since Matt has platinum status at Marriott’s from all the travel he does for work, that means he gets access to their concierge lounges — free breakfast!
I always try to keep breakfast healthy when I’m traveling, as you guys know — gives you a little more wiggle room for later in the day. 🙂 My standard for both days was oatmeal, lots of fruit, yogurt, and some nuts. Tasty!
After breakfast, we checked out the hotel gym — it was AMAZING.
Quite the view, huh? The gym was HUGE too and had all sorts of free weights, weight machines, etc.
We both lifted some weights for a little while — it was so nice having access to gym machines again! I miss having a gym — my strength training definitely falls to the wayside without one.
After our weight lifting, we headed out to explore Miami with a little run!
The area we were in was great for running — best way to explore a new city! 🙂
Don’t palm trees just make everything happier? I love them.
We ran about 3 miles — but of course we stopped and took a few photos and enjoyed the scenery, too. 🙂
Sweat stains are sexy
Great run. Perfect way to explore a bit and get a workout in, too!
We also got to see this guy in action dive bombing and then eating his breakfast:
For lunch, we hit up a place nearby (in Brickell) called Baru Urbano that Matt has been to before and liked.
We shared a salad to start:
And I got the ceviche with plantains for my main course! SO good. This reminded me of our meals in Puerto Rico!
After lunch, it was time to hit up South Beach!
There were a bazillion people out on the beach, but it was pretty windy and cooler when the sun hid behind the clouds, so we decided to save our beach day for the next day in Ft. Lauderdale, and just took a stroll down the beach instead.
I just love being near the water. 🙂
We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring!
And eventually ended up at Osteria del Teatro for dinner, a place our friend Jill recommended.
Jill told me that this place had the squid ink pasta that I was OBSESSED with in Venice. Yessss! Clearly we had to come.
We started with two glasses of red wine and another shared salad — this was delicious! Mixed greens, chopped beets, avocado, mango, orange, and lobster (!) with a truffle oil vinaigrette. AMAZING.
And for my entrée — of course the squid ink linguine. In Italy, I had regular pasta with squid ink sauce, but this was squid ink pasta (black pasta) with regular tomato garlic sauce. It was delicious! These photos do it zero justice.
Point and shoot cameras apparently do not love seafood pasta dishes as much as I do.
We were pretty stuffed after dinner so we opted for some fresh mixed berries for dessert instead of anything heavier. Plus a decaf cappuccino for Matt!
Mmmm… fresh berries are such a satisfying dessert. Very refreshing.
I will leave you with this beautiful picture of downtown Miami at night.
I’ll be back tomorrow with our adventures in Fort Lauderdale!
Have a nice Monday — I am back in Chapel Hill after my 3 a.m. wake up call in Ft. Lauderdale — two flights and a drive later I made it to class, am currently eating lunch at our co-op grocery store before buying some groceries, and then might need a nap before continuing the day. 🙂
