December 14 – Calgary to Fort Lauderdale/Miami, USA

here we are

home for the next 6 days

Weather – 23º, heavy showers as we drove from Fort Lauderdale to Miami

Steps – 8,688

Humidity – 85%

Today Chris and I escaped winter. We are in Miami for a week before 3 weeks on 2 cruises.

Our flight from Calgary to Fort Lauderdale was extremely uneventful – perfect. The flight crew kept us full of drinks and food. I read a bit and watched Love Actually. Any idea how old that movie is? 23 years OLD!

Now that we have spent over 400 days with Regent, they provide transportation before and after the cruise – this doesn’t have to be actually TO the cruise, so we took it for the hour ride from Fort Lauderdale to Miami rather than the 20 min ride from Miami to the cruise terminal.

Our driver was polite but didn’t say much until about halfway into the ride which is when he proceeded to tell us all about Florida real estate - interesting.

not ours, but one of many ships

The Kimpton Surfcomber Hotel, is a small Art Deco hotel in Miami Beach. We’ve checked into plenty of hotels, and first impressions really do set the tone for the stay. Juan at the front desk could not have been nicer. He was more than just

in flight entertainment

business. He is from Ohio, so we bonded over our familiarity with winter’s cold. It also didn’t hurt that he gave us 2 glasses of Prosecco. The hotel has a nightly ‘wine’ hour and a happy hour, both of which we just missed. No problem for Juan…2 glasses, coming right up!

Juan also claimed that he upgraded our room. I say ‘claimed’ because I am super skeptical that anyone in the business of making money does anything for nothing. As it turns out, our room is slightly bigger with a better view – would have cost $30. Juan recommended the first floor rather than the 2^nd or 3rd, which is exactly what we prefer. We try to avoid elevators whenever we can. 3 floors would be no problem for us, even with luggage, but sometimes even 1 floor requires an elevator. Our first-floor room is still up a few stairs, but we are happy.

Although originally thinking we would stay in, calamari and a glass of sangria were too tempting to not venture out for. We didn’t actually know that’s what we would have, but once the host at Tapelia told us it was happy hour and that sangria was $5 we were sold. Tapelia is on Lincoln Road, a pedestrian street about 10 min from our hotel. We sat outside it was probably about 20 degrees at about 9:00.