A Little Jaunt to Florida

For John’s birthday we headed in the middle of the month to Southeastern Florida for a little cold weather break, and visited Miami, Hollywood Beach, and Fort Lauderdale.

We stayed in Hollywood Beach on the water and enjoyed our breakfast on the deck of our accommodations each morning:

(not sure what setting John had his phone on that I am faded out in the image, ha!)

It was pretty windy in the mornings, and occasionally overcast; and this was our view at breakfast:

But then this was our view walking around the boardwalk of Hollywood Beach:

I love the mountains in Colorado but it is always nice to visit the ocean!

We wandered around the South Beach area and stumbled upon a luxury mall (Bal Harbour Shops) filled with luxury brand shops containing things we couldn’t afford (or wouldn’t want to waste money on, we have no interest in impressing anyone, ha!).

But they did have a bookstore (I bought a bookmark there) and they had turtles in their garden displays in the middle of the mall!

We definitely looked out of place in our casual clothes as there were many people wandering around the mall in very expensive clothes acting very impressed with themselves. We laughed because one very well dressed man looking John up and down (when John wasn’t looking but I saw it) with disdain. We weren’t offended we thought it was hysterical and wished the man well is his life of pretentiousness!

There were two beautiful young women walking around, very well dressed and looking like fashion models, and I complimented them on their style and they looked at me like: “why are you talking to us peasant?”. We knew it was time to leave the mall after that – ha!

We decided to give up on the Miami area and go visit Fort Lauderdale. We had fun spending a day at the biggest Outlet Mall in the U.S. – Sawgrass Mills. They have 350 stores and outlets and lots of fun places to eat.

We had “conveyor belt sushi” at SushiGami in the middle of the mall and it was delicious (and fun to select your sushi as it moved by on the conveyor belt.

We visited the craziest outlet/close out/bargain bin place we’ve ever seen – Super Bins.

Yes nearly everything was $1 and the place was packed with bargain shoppers. We got overwhelmed and I got tired of wandering around bins so we only left with some Airpod covers and two decorative pillow covers I found in the bins.

Here’s an image from the web to give you an idea of what it looked like, except it seemed even bigger and endless than the photo below:

Unlike Miami, people were very friendly in Ft; Lauderdale and I chatted with a lady wandering around the mall with a darling dog (Pomeranian?) that was very well dressed!

Back in the Miami area we went to the Bayside Marketplace at Pier 5 and John got to have paella on the water which made him very happy!

And this time there no Iguana spitting at him from a tree above while he ate (see 2024 post April Adventures in Hollywood and Miami, Florida)!

We enjoyed wandering around the Bayside Marketplace area and having an after dinner ice cream.

It was an awesome trip 🙂