Miami 2021: Diary – Day 2

We got up and went right down to breakfast. Our youngest REALLY liked the pancakes and ordered them for a second day in a row! Back up in the room, once the boys were on their Zoom calls, I took advantage of my “day off” by going for a run.

Exploring the Beach Path

In the lobby I asked about recommended runs. She recommended going either north or south on the path, but said there were more interesting things going South. Naturally I went North. My thinking was that I wanted to see if I could find where my wife and I got engaged or at least check out the other hotel, The Confidante, that we had considered staying in.

The path was busy but not so crowded you couldn’t get into a rhythm running. That was, until I encountered stretches of the path that were closed for construction. I had to detour around several sections and ended up doing a lot of running on the sidewalks on the main street. Luckily I was in “explorer” mode with my running so it didn’t bother me. I was going at a slower pace taking in the sights and getting a better feel for the area.

As I got further north it was getting time to turn around. I checked Google Maps to see how far I was from The Confidante and realized I had passed it about half a mile ago! I guess it didn’t stand out as much as I expected. I retraced my path back and noticed it this time. I’m glad we didn’t stay there as there wasn’t much for restaurants around. Plus the bike path in front of the hotel was under construction.

In all I did a 5 mile run which is one of the longer runs I’ve done in the last year. it was a slow pace and it felt good to get some miles on my legs. We’d see if I’d regret it the next day!

Meetings

Back at the hotel I got ready for the last few meetings before I could really unplug from work. I was lucky to find one fo the pool cabanas that was in the shade. I hoped the internet would be better here than it was in the place I was in the previous day.

Since my meetings conflicted with the boys lunch times my wife was able to handle that with them. She took Tomatico back to the Charlotte Bakery for some more Latin goodies and grabbed 5 Guys for my youngest. After my meetings completed, I snuck away to get another giant slice at Pizza Bar.

With my official work complete, I had a few phone calls I needed to make to sort out some travel issues. First, for our next hotel stay at the St. Regis Bal Harbour, I had noticed that our suite upgrade request was still pending. It can be processed up to 5 days before checking, but could be granted anytime after that up to 24 hours before checkin. If it didn’t get granted then we’d get the certificates back.

When I looked at the details of the reservation it said 4 adults and 2 children when clearly it was only going to be 4 of us. I was hoping that wasn’t the cause of the upgrade not being processed so I called Marriott to confirm. After 10 minutes on hold they were able to confirm that was not the reason we hadn’t gotten the upgrade and assured us the upgrade could still be granted over the next few days. We’d have to keep our fingers crossed.

While I had them not he line I also inquired about a reservation we had for New Years in the UAE. I was trying to get details on occupancy limits at a hotel we had previously stayed (all four of us). The system was only allowing a max capacity of 3 people and I hoped we could get a reservation booked for one room for all three of us for the trip we were planning at the end of the year. Curiously the hotel offered package deals for up to 2 adults and 2 children in the same room and I was hoping to get clarity on why I couldn’t book the same room on points for 4 people. Ultimately they had to file a case with the hotel to get more information and I’d have to wait for the answer.

Additionally, I needed too call Citi in order to figure out how to merge the ThankYou points accounts on my two cards that earn ThankYou points. I have a Citi Premier and a Citi DoubleCash card. The Premier card directly earns ThankYou points. The DoubleCash card earns cash back, but that cash back can be converted into ThankYou points, which is where the real value comes in. By combining my ThankYou point accounts I can transfer the points to all the transfer partners available on the Citi Premier card. It took some work on the backend but the agent was successfully able to get things lined up with the accounts so I could do what I want with the points.

Finally, I had some summer reservations with Hyatt to update as our plans changed based on hotel availability. A quick call to them got that sorted out as well. With those out of the way I found the kids had finished with their school so I took them to the pool while my wife finished the last of her meetings. The weekend was finally arriving.

Beach and Dinner

When my wife finished her meetings we headed to the beach to see what it was like. It was a hot and sunny day and there were quite a few people. The sections in front of each hotel had stands where guests could rent chair and umbrellas. Our hotel shared with the Lowes hotel. It was late in the day and they were packing everything up. We were just there to check the place out anyways. We headed down to the water. The beach was very wide and the water was reasonably warm according to the boys. They only quickly got their feet wet.

The sun was setting and the boys were hungry. We decided to split up for dinner. Tomatico and my wife found a Latin Cafe they wanted to try. Our youngest and I found a place called The Chicken Spot we wanted to try. It was a 20 minute walk and unfortunately wasn’t worth it. We ended up getting some popcorn chicken and waffle fries. The fries were excellent, but the chicken was barely warm and not fresh. Plus the service was slow. The restaurant wasn’t big and it wasn’t overly busy, but it was 30 minutes after we finished eating before we could flag down our server to get our check. Oh well.

On the way home we decided to get some ice cream. We checked out two different places and neither looked promising. The third one we found looked better so we went in. It was called Ice + Spice which would make the think they’d have some weird flavors, but they seemed to specialize in shakes. They had soft serve and gelato and the flavors were pretty standard. That was fine with us and it turned out to be above average, but not spectacular. We’re still jaded by all the amazing gelato from Rome!

There was a park across the street and we found a bench to sit down and eat. The area was the Art Deco district and the street was closed to traffic, making it very pedestrian friendly. It was all lit up and had lots of restaurants to choose from.

Back at our hotel Tomatico described their experience. They had found a dessert shop with lots of unique paletas (popsicles) and toppings. Their dinner at the Latin Cafe was good but not great. Tomatico seemed to like it more than my wife did. They both loved the paletas! We’d have to go back to get them before the end our our stay!