Instead of sharing a day of what I ate, I’m going to share what I ate during my winter getaway to South Beach this past weekend. Plus a brief recap of all the fun I had, in case you’re interested or want to plan your own trip. I traveled with my husband Pat, and another couple- Jim and Kat. We planned a very spur of the moment Miami trip at the end of December when we saw Frontier was running awesome fare deals from Philly to MIA. Trading in ice and cold for sand, palm trees, and the beach- done and done.
Friday- We arrived around 8 to our Air BnB apartment (highly recommend using Air BnB for any traveling!) got ready and headed to dinner at Khong River House. I had some pad thai noodles and a tuna poke (raw tuna with avocado with a ginger soy sauce)… most noteworthy during this meal was the thai iced tea! OMG have you ever had thai iced tea…. It’s seriously soooooooo delicious- my friend Jim and I went back each day to have one… it’s a mix so it’s probably loaded with sugar but I’ve never had anything like it before and it was orange, so cool. After dinner we hit up the one brewery in South Beach and played darts!
Saturday- woke up to beautiful day… ate breakfast and then headed to the boardwalk… first stop- La Cote at Fountainbleau– the Twisted Coconut was probably a top 5 mixed drink I’ve had in my life. The scene here was awesome, we loved having a couple drinks and splitting some calamari and just enjoying the sunshine.
For lunch we headed to Joe’s Stone Crab for lunch…. A 100 year old restaurant known for it’s stone crabs, my husband Pat got the crabs which were very fresh and I tried the lobster mac and cheese. Definitely the best lobster mac and cheese I’ve ever had… perfect cheese to bread crumbs to noodle to lobster ratio!
After lunch we ended up renting bikes to explore South Beach more… great exercise in addition to the 13 miles we ended up walking during the entire day.
Dinner Saturday was everyone’s favorite but mine. Don’t get me wrong, Meat Market was delicious but it is definitely geared more towards steak eaters which I am not. I got escargot while everyone got steaks with delicious sounding sauces and we all shared truffle mashed potatoes, gouda tater tots, garlic kale, and broccolini with sundried tomatoes. I ordered dessert to share but everyone was mostly full…. It was a chocolate macadamia bar that was styled beautifully.
After doing some day drinking and eating a huge meal (plus all the walking) we were all pretty exhausted and stayed in Saturday and played card games, I know we are pretty cool.
Sunday we headed to the beach!!! Beautiful water and the weather was warm but the water was cold. We stayed for a couple hours before heading to Havana 1957 for lunch. This lunch was kinda disappointing… cubanos were basically regular sandwiches and nothing special…. This was also probably the least expensive meal we had so you definitely still got what you paid for.
After lunch we headed to the bayside for a ride on a Jet Boat! They described it as a jet ski on steroids… seats about 25 and does leaps, 360’s and goes really fast. Unlike any boat ride I’ve ever had before and we all really loved it! We also did a brief tour of the homes on the islands in between South Beach and the mainland: Rosie, Ricky Martin, V-ice, the inventor of Viagra, Will Smith, and Madonna all own homes here. Gorgeous and immaculate houses!
Sunday we enjoyed a sunrise before dinner at Bazaar a Spanish tapas place. I think we had about 12 tapas between the 4 of us (some were basically one bite though) and tried so many delicious things, my favorite was the coconut rice served in a coconut. There was a nice balance of everything- veggies, proteins, etc.
After dinner we relaxed for awhile before heading out to da clubs. First a drink at Clandestino to try some locals brews and then to the Clevelander. The club scene is so not my scene but it was cool to check out what SoBe is all about. It would be a great location for a bachelor/bachelorette party for sure.
Did 10 miles on Sunday!
Monday we did more walking around and a little shopping while taking in our last day of beautiful weather before heading back to cold icy Philly. Overall an awesome trip and perfect weekend getaway for the winter 🙂
Have you ever taken a winter weather getaway?! Where did you go or where would you go!?
