Miami 2015 Day 1

We woke up and packed in the morning because we were being picked up by Flightline at 8:45am. I was able to get my keys to David to keep an eye on the apartment during the week. It is nice to live so close to work.  The car came to pick us up just a couple minutes ahead of schedule. The driver wasn’t really a talker at all but that was fine.  It would be directly part of the commute hours to get there but at least I was not driving.  The ride to the airport had traffic mainly getting on 95 from 3 then from about 28 down to the HOV lane on 93. The driver used the HOV lane which I am sure saved us about 15 minutes or maybe more on this drive rather than taking the regular lanes.  The airport was not crazy busy and we used the automatic check-in kiosk with no issues and dropped off our bag quickly. Because I bought both tickets this time we got TSA Pre and the security line was quick and easy with no shoe or laptop removals.  Inside we found the Cisco Brewery restaurant was serving breakfast and decided to eat there. They were not fast but the food was ok. I had a bacon melt and Daniela had a full breakfast. Coffee for both and a banana and orange smoothie for Daniela.  By the time we finished and settled it was already boarding time and in moments we were on the plane.

The plane departed on time. It was a 737 that was of course full. There were a few bumps but both of us basically slept through almost all of the flight. It was uneventful is the easiest way to put it.

This was my first attempt getting out of Miami airport in all the times I have been to it. We had to take a tram to baggage check then we had to figure out to go upstairs to the walk that was almost as long as the airport which brought us to another tram that took us to the rental car pickup.  Since I am an Avis Preferred we already had our Ford Fusion in space C8.  Getting out was quick. I was worried because my current license expires before we are done with this trip but I have a temporary with me (I also brought my passport).  The guy gave me no issues though. There was a crap ton of traffic getting from the airport to the hotel. I think we met into the start of commute time which kinda sucked.  I think it took about an hour to get what google maps GPS said would take about 30 minutes without traffic. Still we made it there and it was pretty direct. 

We chose to use the valet parking at the Newport Beachside Hotel which is $25 per day versus $20 for self parking.  I am not sure if renting was totally going to be a good idea for the whole trip. I did see that they have a rental booth for the hotel so might have been able to rent for the guaranteed drives we had to do anyway.  In any event, it took longer than it should have to check us in. They were apparently still cleaning rooms from previous checkout and the girl had a hard time finding us one with the ocean view like we reserved. Fortunately we got room 402.  By the time we got checked in Daniela had already gotten us into a tour of the facility for the next day (presumably to get us to come back again but including a $100 credit to the hotel restaurant and a free breakfast each if we did it by noon the next morning).

We got to the room which is nice but maybe a little run down (not bad just obviously not been redone in a few years).  It has a separate living room and large bathroom with a Jacuzzi tub.  We got changed and decided to walk around to find dinner. We managed to go maybe 10 minutes away where we fond Pacha Mamma (spelled with 2 Ms) which is a Peruvian restaurant and I knew we were eating there today on our anniversary day.  We sat outside. The waiter and chef were both Peruvian which was nice. We got a bottle of red wine and started with a trio of ceviches, plain, with rocotto and with yellow aji.  They were the best ceviche we had in the US. The waiter had us get the corvina which is a traditional ceviche fish in Peru.  He kept us down to only one main dish because he said two would be too much for us so we got the seco de cordero (braised lamb shank).  It was excellent. It was served with beans and rice and yukka along with a small salad of red onions and tomato.  We were very close to full by the time we finished this.  To finish out we tried their picarones which were not on the menu but they turned out to be standard wheat based fried dough with a sugar based sauce on them. They were good but not proper picarones.  Oh well, no place can be perfect.  So we finished with a coffee each then walked up strip to a point where it turns to a bridge then back down by the beach when we found a way in. I think the walk was an hour and a half or so.

When we got back to the room the front desk had given us a bottle of champagne for our anniversary so we opened that then we tried out the Jacuzzi then called it a night.