A last day at the (South) beach

We wrapped up our last full day in Miami by taking in South Beach one more time. This time, however, we actually stuck our toes in the water and enjoyed the sand and surf...for about 10 minutes. I picked up a shell, a friendly local took our photo and all seemed right. There is nothing, nothing I tell you, like spending a week away from it all and getting to know all the little parts of another part of the world. And, as they say, the nice thing about Miami is it's so close to the United States...

Hopefully we'll have another adventure or two in us yet. But, as some of you know, we're expecting our first child in February. Who knows, maybe we can take the little one on those adventures with us...just not to Key West (until they're 21!).

Thanks for reading and for future updates, pictures and the like with what's going on with our unborn child and it's mother, remember to check back here.

Back in Miami, at the monastery

After two and a half days in the Keys we returned to Miami for another day and a half before we departed back to reality in St. Louis.

One of the places we made sure to hit was the Ancient Spanish Monastery. Located in North Miami, the Monastery is the oldest structure in the United States. Tycoon William Randolph Hearst was in Spain and came across the building. He love it so much he purchased it and had it broken down, stone by stone and shipped to the United States in 1925. About that time hoof and mouth disease was running rampant and the boxes were broken open and the hay used to keep the stones packed was removed and burned. The workers did not put the same stones back in each of the marked boxes.

The broken down monastery stayed in pieces and in storage until 1952. Heart's financial trouble forced an estate sale and the monastery was purchased by two gentlemen as a tourist attraction. Assembling the monastery took 19 months and over a million bucks. And when they were done putting it together there were pieces left over (but, really, who hasn't been there before?).

In 1964 the Diocese of South Florida purchased the monastery and it has been in its care ever since.

We enjoyed our visit to the impressive structure. It was absolutely beautiful and, as you'll see, very photogenic.

For pictures click HERE.

Baseball, rain and campers

Our first full day in Miami and what do I want to do?

Check out a baseball game of course!

I talked Lisa into catching an afternoon game at Landshark Stadium to watch the Florida Marlins play the Washington Nationals (the worst team in pro baseball).

We arrived early enough that there were literally a dozen cars in the parking lot. If not for the people drinking by the car next to us, we would have been the only ones in the parking lot. As we approached the stadium a kind gentlemen told us our umbrella (purchased that morning) was not allowed in the stadium. It's Florida, it rains almost every day in the summer but our umbrella was not allowed.

We walked back to the car (a short walk) lathered up our sunscreen (you can't bring in open bottles of anything either), returned to the ticket office and purchased two of the cheapest tickets we could find.

As we walked into the stadium, which was built for the Miami Dolphins pro football team, we noticed there were a lot of kids in matching T-shirts running around. We didn't think much of it.

After we found our seats we noticed the stadium was quite empty, save for the dozens upon dozens of kids in matching T-shirts.

Then the PA spoke up and we were alerted.

It was Camp Day. Every kiddie camp from South Florida was coming to the game. The attendance for the game was about 27,000 and I'm going to guess about 20,000 of them were boys and girls ages 4-14 in matching T-shirts, screaming their bloody heads off and clogging up the lines at the concession stand.

The game itself was rather drab despite some decent players on both teams. Lisa and I agreed to cut out before the 7th inning to avoid the early part of rush hour traffic. I had hoped to pop into the gift shop to purchase a specific Marlins hat (I like the logo, sue me). As we walked toward the gift shop the sky opened up and a massive storm soaked the area. We were free from the rain since we were in the concourse...but then again, in retrospect, maybe the rain would have been the best option.

Thousands of campers and their guardians flooded the concourse in an effort to stay dry. What had been the most open part of the stadium turned into a traffic nightmare. There were thousands of them. Some going one way, some going the other way and some not going any which way.

We eventually found the gift shop and they had run out of the type of hat I wanted.

The rain finally let up and we were able to return to our car but not before I snapped the above photo of bus upon bus in the parking lot waiting to take a load of wet, smelly, sugary children back home.
The Marlins won the game (or so I was told after we left).

Our lovely little rental

We decided we wanted to rent a car to get around Miami and the Keys. We settled on a full size car since I wasn't that interested in tearing up the town in a tuna can on wheels. So Lisa booked us one Hotwire.com. We didn't know what we were getting nor who we were getting it from but upon arriving at Budget, we were fortunate enough to be the proud drivers of this little number, a Toyota Matrix. It's a four door hatchback with plenty of room to spare. The AC worked (which was fantastic) and one of the ammenities was a thermometer in the dashboard (which was routinely showing 90-105 on our trip). It handled like a dream, didn't guzzle gas and was comfortable, served us well and was cherry red (the first time I've driven a bright red car). I must say, we thoroughly enjoyed the Matrix experience.

Welcome to our website!

Hi everyone,

Lisa and I would like to thank you for dropping by our blog to see what's happening in our life. We're going to start off with our recent 7 days and 7 nights in Miami and the Florida Keys. We returned last night despite our better judgement. It was such an excellent vacation that Lisa and I (okay, mostly I) would happily leave the day to day stress of life behind to sit on a beach, sip a cold beer and enjoy the multicultural melting pot that is Miami and the Keys.
Alas, not everyone can be Ernest Hemmingway.
In the future this will be the best place to see pictures and get updates of what and how we're doing.
Without further ado, let us delve into the nuttiness that was our recent vacation.

Love,
Lisa & David