Florida

I recently took a trip to visit my friend, Rachael, in Florida. My other friend, Connie, joined me! What a great time we had! In fact we've decided we need to take a bi-annual girls trip!

The first day we were there, Rachael showed us around her neighborhood and told us a little bit about the area. Then she fixed us a delicious dinner. I love her cooking!

Thursday was overcast, but we hit the beach anyway. My skin was grateful for the cloud coverage. We got a good hour in before it got windy and we got rained on. I was okay with it. What can I say, I'm an Arizona girl and it's a rare occurence.

The beach we visited was right next to the Coast Guard station as well as some freighter ship docks.

The view down the coastline. We had the beach all to ourselves!. The best shot of me yet...our feet.

On Friday we did an airboat tour in the swamplands of the Everglades.
It was pretty overcast so the Airboat pilot told us we probably wouldn't see many gators. But he did manage to find us one. He said it was rare to find one this big because it's legal to hunt them. The gator kept trying to come right up against the boat and we couldn't see him very well. The pilot ran us around this gator a few times trying to get a good angle for all of the passengers. Eventually the gator started to get pissed and began hissing at us. Who knew alligators hissed?

The swamp was full of birds. As you neared them they'd all take flight and it looked neat-o.

This fat beast was one of their caged alligators. One of the workers was standing in the cage with him and giving us all the details on alligators. He opened the alligators mouth to show how they sensed food. He poked his tongue with a PVC pipe and the gator snapped his mouth shut immediately. Good reaction time, gator! We got to hold a little baby alligator.Even though I know alligators are cold blooded, I was still surprised at how cold this little guy was! He felt smooth, like a purse! We spotted this little dude hanging out in the swamp as we were walking back to see the other animals.

Other animals on display:

Wolves

Panthers Bobcat An Egret just hanging out in front of the store...
On Saturday we abandoned the kiddos and did a food tour in South Beach. We were the only ones on the tour that day so we felt all special! The guide told us her groups usually numbered around 8-10 people.

The food was delish, wish I'd thought to take pictures of all we sampled! We started with appetizers at the Books and Books Cafe. We had a tasty black bean hummus with bagel chips, some sort of tilapia/cilantro/lime/onion concotion. Now I'm NOT a seafood lover, but it was YUM. And then some homemade chips and guacamole. We sampled a Cuban Sandwich and Cuban hot chocolate (I may be addicted to this stuff, it was like drinking spun sugar and chocolate). We hit the 8oz. burger bar. I want the recipe for the hamburger buns! Then it was off to The Frieze ice cream parlor. We sampled a few ice creams and sorbets (including cucumber...surprisingly good, and ginger/pear...think pear with a bit of a boost!).

This All Saints store was kind of cool. Rosie, it's European, maybe you've heard of it :P. You can't really see them because of the reflection, but this window was filled with old fashioned sewing machines. Then when you look inside the store the entire back wall was lined with them as well. I thought it was pretty coolio. I loved the architecture in the area. It was old school meets art deco. I liked the buildings with the rounded corners.
This sign was over the Guess store.
A lot of the corner stores were auto dealerships back in the day. It was pretty amazing they were able to chip away at some plaster and recover the old sign.

This is a shot of Espanola Way. All of the architecture had a Spanish influence. The area was designed by a couple of white guys and all of the buildings on this intersection were painted peach. Kind of weird, but I would have liked to see this area at night all lit up. Cool looking tree. These pod looking things open up into big red hybiscus-looking flowers. It had these little orchid shoots growing out of it. What an amazing place! Food, shopping, the beach...what more could you ask for?

Sunday was Mother's Day. Rachael fed us a delicious breakfast of stuffed French Toast and strawberries. We went to Rachael's ward and received a ginormous box of Whitman's chocolates (that I'm still working on). Apparently a ward member works at the chocolate factory. And that evening we had a yummy dinner. Rachael baked some of her homemade focaccia bread. She knows how I love this bread of hers!

Our final day :( We hit the Sawgrass Mills Mall. It's a GINORMOUS outlet mall basically. We walked through Berlington Coat Factory and the J. Crew outlet (where I scored some stinkin' cute shirts for Miss Mae). We hit the food court for some crepes. You could order these crepe wraps with your choice of filling and they were HUGE! I mean H-U-G-E! Rachael, Connie and I all shared a chicken pesto wrap.I'm not sure what this was called, but it was yummy. It's a sweet corn cake with a mozzarella cheese filling.And I had to hit the churro stand! They offered churros of all kinds. You could get the big fat ones with your choice of filling (we chose guava with a cream cheese drizzle), or the little skinny ones with a drizzled topping. We chose nutella and dulce de leche. MMMMMMMMMMMM.

Then it was off to McKenzie's ballet practice at the Y. We sat and conversed while Kenz practiced. Too cute!!

And finally the flight home :(. Don't get me wrong, it's good to be home! But it's always hard getting back to your usual after a nice vacation!

Thanks for being such a gracious hostess, Rachael! I had a blast and am ready to come back!

Can anybody tell me why the spacing on my posts is all jiggity jacked? I go back in and fix it, then it just goes back to this odd spacing!!! It's driving me insane!