Blues Bash 2007

A few weekends ago, Lauren Rogers Museum of Art hosted their Blues Bash concert on the front lawn event and we were able to go. We had a great time sitting outside in our lawn chairs, eating BBQ-aka food with BBQ sauce on it, not grilled food- being with friends and listening to some great blues music. We stayed until most people were gone- and the lone drunken woman had stopped dancing, which was quite entertaining- and had a great evening. It makes you happy to do fun, cultural things in your town when you assume that if you lived in another exciting town they would have stuff like this, so it made me feel good in a "my hometown is cool too" sort of way. Anyway, it was fun.

back in Del Ray

So, after South Beach we opted to go back to Del Ray- South Beach was extremely crowded and since our hotel turned out to be a bust we went back to Del Ray which we really enjoyed the most. We stopped in for Ice cream at a cute little homade candy and ice cream parlor-very cute - and ate our icecream outside and watched people as they went by. We later went for Sushi at this local place down there-probably the freshest and best tasting sushi I have ever had-really awesome food! And then we went home to Mark's spent the night and came home. All in all it was a good trip-except that our luggage was lost going and coming- and thus has led me to the conclusion that if I am going anywhere within 15 hours,I will attempt driving.

South Beach

So, after the terrible night in the hotel room we awoke and were ready to get out of there and find the real south beach and we had a great time people watching there. It was pretty hot there but we ate at a great restraunt- News Cafe - really cool, outside, just like something you would expect to eat down there and then we walked around. Went to the beach-really gorgeous water-really hot sand and hot air at 12:00 noon. We also made it by Miami Ink, which was really cool. Saw Madonna's hotel The Delano- incredibly beautiful-would be worth the splurge if I went back. The trees and branches was an alley way just outside the hotel lobby- really beautiful place-would have taken more pics except we would have look like the tourists that we were.

terrible ugly horrible hotel room

This is handsdown the ugliest hotel room I have ever stayed in. I was afraid to let my skin touch the sheets for fear that I would bring home the terrible infestion of bed bugs that NBC has been repoting on this spring. I was confused when I booked this hotel and put us on the opposite end of South Beach and thus stayed in a hotel that hasn't been updated since Miami Vice. It went from hideous track lighting in the den with country paneling on the bottom with some miami green paint to sunflowers on the table-what are we in the midwest or florida?- to the trailer park bathroom with the homade bidet! Yes homade bidet which I promptly pointed out to Eric and forbade him to touch it. Neither of us got in the shower or let our skin touch the toliet. I also slept in socks and full clothing. There were also some odd very Las Vegas 1975v mirrors in the hall going to the bathroom-not sure what that was about. Also the bedroom was confused and thought it was from Gatlinburg, TN with all of its pine furniture and burgundy bedspread. The kitchen could have come out of anyhome in America about 20 years ago except for the foul smell being emited occassionally from the sink. Needless to say, it was bearable for one night but had it not been 10:00 p.m. and Eric calling me a princess and reassuring me we would not catch bed bugs and making me laugh, I would not have stayed that long. I also forgot to mention there was a barking dog next door. Wehn I called down to the front desk to report this atrocious behavior of one of the guests, she let em know that this was a pet friendly hotel. MOst of you may be thinking- she just booked it because it was cheap but no, we paid $225 a night to stay at this dump. Never again! I will probably never stay somewhere that is not personally recommended or from the southern living site again. Thanks to Mark for letting us crash at his impeccably clean and wonderful home back in Del Ray!!!

more miami pics

pics below were from the Breakers hotel in West Palm beach- a gorgeous hotel and fabulous restraunt! We had a great time but I have lost enthusiasm for writing as this is my third attempt to post these pics. Also, we enjoyed the time we were able to spend in Del Ray Beach with our great friend Mark Duffell. Del Ray is a great little town with an awesome downtown area and Mark also rescued us from our terrible hotel in Miami Beach. If you see the pic of Eric in an extremely ugly hotel room that was it.

miami pics