(click here for today's pictures)
We survived our scary-ish hotel and slept perfectly. I did wake up a few times during the night but quickly went back to sleep. Robby and I were both pretty surprised that we slept as well as we did while sharing a tiny little bed but segwaying around South Beach is pretty tiring.
We watched our bit of HGTV this morning while packing up. Then we went to the car-one of the reasons that Robby picked our hotel (other than the 100 dollar price difference) was the free parking. The parking lot was actually 6 spaces that 20 cars crammed on. Thankfully, only one car had to be moved for Robby to back our car out. If I had driven there (or if we had our big van) I would still be pulling forward and scooting back trying to get out of that parking lot.
When we were on the rental car shuttle the day we arrived, we heard a family suggesting House of Dogs to another family. So we thought that today would be the day that we ate there. It was very near the hotel so we had about an hour to kill before the place opened up. We drove around South Beach and it was pretty different this morning than it was last night.
We parked at a playground (can leave the kids at home but can't take the parents out of us) and then walked to the House of Dogs. They opened at 12 and we were the first customers. Apparently, here in South Florida things are a bit later than at home-the hotel lady even said that rush hour will be around 10 tomorrow. I had mango salsa and sweet chili sauce on my hot dog. We both ate every bit of our hot dogs and then enjoyed walking them off on our way back to our car.
About 45 minutes away was the home of the Gator Boys at Everglades Holiday Park. The boys love watching that show and I had envisioned it being a tiny little place. I was wrong, there were more air boats than I had ever seen before. Buses, people, boats, concession stands, gift shops-it was pretty crazy. The boys would have absolutely loved it and we would have taken a boat tour and seen the alligator show if they had been there. Maybe next time we come down to Disney we can make a 3 hour detour down here.
It didn't take too long for us to cross back over to Ft. Lauderdale and find our hotel. We checked in and were saddened to discover that we didn't have HGTV-that was going to be my plan for the rest of the day-just laying in bed watching HGTV. But since we didn't have that channel then we had to find something else to do this evening.
We were near the water front and Robby quickly booked us a cruise. Hmm, maybe he didn't really want to watch tv all evening. We went on a 6 person sunset cruise around Ft. Lauderdale's canals. It was pretty amazing seeing all of the mega mansions around the water ways. The average house that we saw cost 10+ million. And that is not even including the boats that we saw-big boats like Steven Spielberg's yacht.
There were 2 other couples on our boat ride and I think seeing those houses made them a bit envious. I can easily pass on all of those luxuries but two things I did take away from our boat tour was that we need more lamps in our house (like all of the houses that we saw) and we need to eat outside more often (only need more south Florida weather.)
The boat was a little thing and pretty cute. If I were to get a boat, that would be the kind that I would choose. Robby still wants a 4 wheeler over a segway or boat. Anyway, this little boat was electric and just kind of hummed as we floated along the calm canals. It was a pretty perfect evening out on the water.
After our boat ride, the other couples were going out on the town but I had my heart set on Sonic. Every time I take the kids there for happy hour, there are some cinna-somethings that are just calling my name on the menu board. But I never get them and had my heard set on getting them while on our trip. And would you believe-we have not seen a single sonic on this trip? I found one that should have been just a few blocks from where we went on the boat but we couldn't find it so my cinnamon snack will just have to wait.
We did find a restaurant called Lime that was a burrito/taco place. It was absolutely delicious and we were stuffed by the end of the evening. This was a pretty perfect ending to our little vacation.
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