Miami

Our third and final stop (or so we thought) was Miami!

We spent our last afternoon in the Palm Beach area at Peanut Island. And while this was amazing and wonderful... Gray forgot to put sunblock on his back and absolutely fried himself. Which kind of set the mood for the Miami portion of the trip. 

When we checked the time to get from Peanut Island to Miami we were getting a drive time of almost 3 hours... it's only suppose to take 1.5hr. So we decided to stop midway for lunch at the Delray Market. I saw this on tiktok and was interested in checking it out and I'm glad we did.

Basically Delray Market is like a mall cafeteria minus the actual mall. There's sooo much to choose from that there is something there for everyone. Gray got a poke bowl and was surprised by how good it was. I got a quesadilla and an elote. The elote was soooooo good! I would definitely recommend the stop if you're passing through!

Then we started driving down to Miami and the traffic was just. so. bad. We learned pretty early on in our FL trip that the speed limit is more of a suggestion but Miami was next level crazy driving. We got to our hotel to find all the parking was sold out and we had to park a few blocks away. 

By the time we finally got into our hotel room we were both stressed and tired. We rallied and took a walk down the "Atlantic Way" path. At this point it was probably 10pm but it was Friday night so there were a TON of people on this path. There were a bunch of hotel parties and beach parties raging but we were definitely not up for any of that because of the day we had. So we turned in and planned to give Miami a second try in the morning. 

 

The next morning I got up early and took a walk down the path again to check everything out in the daylight and stop in at starbies for a drink.

I got back to the hotel to find Gray as red as a lobster and pretty miserable about his burned back. That being said- beach was definitely off the table for the day. So instead we decide to go visit the Florida Everglades National Park. We first took a fanboat tour at Everglades Safari. This was my first trip on a fanboat and it was a "mind over matter" situation for me! I've been on boats since I was in diapers and to see land approaching at a significant speed made my stomach droooop! It took me a minute to really feel like we weren't going to crash. Gray on the other hand loved every second of it! We saw a few alligators, birds, turtles, and fish.

Fan boy

Gator!

After the fan boat we headed over to the National Park proper and checked out the visitor center. After talking to a ranger we headed to the Royal Palm area. We checked out both trails and saw a bunch more critters- including an alligator that crawled right under us!

Just a gator under my toes, no big deal

We begrudgingly left the park to head back to Miami. We scrapped the original plan of getting Cuban food in Miami since we now knew how awful traffic and parking was and found Cafe La Trova on the outskirts of the city. We both got empanadas which were delicious. The real winner for me was the churro waffles and the dulce de leche crepes on the dessert menu, yum!

The next day Gray was still cursing the sun and the city so we headed out of the city to Biscayne National Park. Biscayne is more of an aquatic national park and my original plan was to rent  kayaks. Unfortunately due to covid they weren't doing rentals so we checked out the visitor center and walked the shoreline. And right in the harbor waiting to say hello were three manatees. Seriously- manatees understood the assignment and delivered on this trip. 

3 cute potatoes

After watching them we looked into taking a boat tour but missed the AM one and the next one wasn't for a couple hours (and would get us back way too late). With the afternoon now free (and still not interested in Miami) we decided to go check out Key Largo. Annnnnnd this was the decision that took our vacation off our planned agenda.... but that's for the next post!