Vacation in MIAMI!

If you follow me on any social media AT ALL, you probably are well aware of my ‘Miamimoon’ vacation I took last week with my husband from the  photos I kept sharing…..and sharing…..and sharing.

I harass you all with photos because I care.

ANYWAYS, here’s a more detailed recap of our vacay away in the sun!

The few days prior to Gordon flying in, I was busy at BlogHer Food. Once that wrapped up, he flew in Sunday morning and we were ready to hit the ground running…or should I say sand?! I’d like to point out that we have never ever had a vacation away by ourselves since we’ve been together almost 8 years. We had no honeymoon, so that’s why I used the hashtag #miamimoon.

After brunch we checked into the lovely Lord Balfour Hotel on Ocean Drive and promptly changed into our swimsuits to hit the beach. It was really nice of the hotel to put my initials on the side of their building for my arrival. 😉

Ready to lay out, for sure!!

The cool thing about the Lord Balfour is they reserve lounge chairs and umbrellas for all their guests on the beach. It was glorious! I think we lasted an hour before we decided to head back to the hotel.

After a quick search on Yelp {aka my best friend while traveling}, we found this amazing amazing Italian restaurant only a few blocks away called Fratelli La Bufala. If you ever visit Miami, you MUST go here and order the La Reale pizza. Hands down the best pizza we’ve ever eaten EVER. We didn’t have time to go back again even though we were DYING to. It was seriously that good. We also ordered the minestrone, the mediterranean salad and the lasagna. All delicious, especially the lasagna. We cannot say enough good things about this restaurant. Just GO.

The end.

After that night of eating amazing food, then next morning, we went for a run together which we rarely ever get to do. I love all the palm trees and ocean sounds! But holy balls, it’s HOT. I think we only made it 3 miles before needing to head back to the air conditioned hotel.

We finished up our workouts in the hotel room and then headed down for breakfast.

My husband has a really HAWT farmers tan. It goes really well with his biceps. 😉 Lol!

Breakfast was divine. I only had a bite of the muffin and croissant and filled up on oj and all these fresh berries!

Since we were still pretty much on Pacific time this entire trip, our breakfasts were lunches, our lunches were dinners and dinner seemed to turn into late night snacks. So for our lunch/dinner, we started at Serendipity to try the frozen hot chocolate.

Uhhh, yeah. This did not disappoint.

Aaand, since La Duree was just a few doors down, we taste tested a few macarons! Man, are these hard to stop eating! Mmm….

For actual dinner, we met up with the Cortecero family Gordon had taught while he was on his mission. They were SO nice and just said a bunch of wonderful things about my husband which was just precious! Gosh, I love that guy. **Also notice his sunburn….I got one too. We were only out an hour, and BAM. Stick a fork in us, we’re done. Lol!

We got gelato after dinner.

FINE, I’ll get some. Twist my arm…

I think these flavors were triple chocolate, cookies and cream and nutella swirl on the bottom.

I’ve fallen in love with gelato and I don’t care who knows it.

The next morning, I tried out some pastries they had at the hotel. I’m not gonna lie, this cinnamon roll thingy was pretty darn ridiculous. I ate the center out and then had a lot of those fresh berries again.

Pretty sure we tried Shake Shack the same day, too?! #fatties #butitsokonvacation All my days are running together. 

GET THE CHEESE FRIES…and a diet coke to make yourself feel better about ordering the cheese fries.

At some point we traveled 16 miles for Mojo Donuts…a cute little donut shop in a strip mall in ‘Pembroke Pines’. Totally worth the drive. Expect a blog post about these beauties real soon.

Aaand, since we were pretty much in Fort Lauderdale, we drove the last 10 minutes to check out this pretty building.

I posted this photo because I was playing around with photoshop and liked the sun glare effects. Expect me to bombard you with more photos like this. Like right here.

From Fort Lauderdale, we decided to take A-1-A back to South Beach. We thought it would be scenic.

LIES!!!!!! Was not scenic at all. Like, at all at all. We did pull off to walk on some of the beaches though. I preferred these ones better than south beach because they were approximately 70,000 times less crowded.

You see? Not a lot of people.

Of the few people that were on this beach, the majority were in thongs. Soooo, that was fun.

PS- guys should not wear thongs. Just throwing that out there.

Precious. We love each other…….

That night we got back to the hotel pretty late, tended to our sunburns, ate our late night snacks and binge watched Nick at night. Seinfeld and Friends for DAYS.

It was glorious.

We slept really well that night and then got up early to pack and head home…except our last flight was delayed by almost 2 hours.

Thanks a lot, Chicago.

Except Nuts on Clark was right by our gate, so life wasn’t so bad after all.

PS- the Chicago mix is amazing. Cheese and caramel corn….who knew?

Finally, we got to board our plane home and make it back to our kiddos. The 4 hour flight was spent napping, but mostly playing 7 little words. Download the app and thank me later. Don’t mind my au naturale hair and no makeup. I really go all out for that husband of mine…..sigh. {And yes, I bought that shirt for my husband…it was a Christmas gift. We had at least 15 people comment on it at O’Hare. Lol!}

Here’s to hoping we can sneak in another little vacation sooner rather than later. Thanks for coming along the ride, folks!

New recipe coming up tomorrow.