Culinary Tour - Art Deco District Miami Beach

Grace Della is our tour operator. She is originally from Argentina, who then moved to San Francisco and then Miami. She is very knowledgeable of the South Beach area. I would definately take another tour with her. She is very personable and loves to share her knowledge.

This was our first stop at D. Rodriguous Cuba where we experienced plantain chips with a cuba salsa, along with empenada's with crab and a slow cooked beef brisket. Yummy. It was very good. Here is a good example of what Art Deco is. It follows the rule of three's. That is if you split the building in half - they would be the same, and you would also see "eyebrow's" ove the windows.

The chef explains his dish.

I promised myself that I would try everything, even if it meant eating fish. Well this restaurant served a fish marinated in hers with a rice dish with edame and vegetables along with a large shrimp in a tomatoe base marinade. It was awesome!

Grace did a draw for a special bottle of Olive Oil with a value of $50.00. A lady from Winnipeg was the lucky winner.

At this hotel we enjoyed slow cooked beef burgers with chips. They were amazing.

The ceiling in this room is only about 6.5 feet and is mirrored by a vinyl sheeting. it was amazing as you didn't know - it created such an illusion. This was soooo cool. This restaurant is famour for their steaks/burgers.

Jerry's Famous Diner was our first stop for dessert. This building is a true example of interior art deco with lots of glass tiles and designs.

Enjoying Chilean coffee at a local "hole in the wall". This coffee is very strong and served in a very small cup with lots of sugar. The taste is very smooth. The cost to buy a pound of this coffee is about $3.00. Well worth another visit. The Clay Hotel is where Al Capone used to spend his time with his gang....

Our last stop on the tour was to taste Gelato icecream hand made on the premises. We were given two small cones each sampling different flavours. A refreshing ending to a wonderful tour.

Saturday, exploring Miami

This building that looks like a Pineapple houses the restaurant owned by Gloria Estivan.

Talk about extravagance. The owner of this home installed at the price of $80,000 an air conditioner that not only cooled the house, but also cooled the property.

This house belonged to an owner of a large Pharmacutical company. This is the largest home of the island. Each palm tree was brought in from Africa at the cost of $10,000 per tree and there were 320 brought and planted on the island.

This is Elizabeth Taylor's home. It's quite beautiful - I loved the running rabit statue on the front lawn.

The blue house belongs to Sylvester Stalone. This too was very private.

The house with the red clay tile roof belongs to Opray Winfry - this is probably the most private house in the area because the sight seeing boats can't get in front of it.

Boy what a busy day we had. Our morning started out with a leisurely breakfast at The Floridian which is a local restaurant that was reviewed by Rachel Ray - on her $40.00 a day tv show. The food was good and there sure was lot's to eat. No need for lunch today. We then headed to Bayside Marina where we caught our boat tour. This was a really interesting tour. We saw beautiful homes of the rich and famous and enjoyed a nice tour of the Miami shoreline.

For dinner we took a Culinary tour, which took us to several restaurants in the Art Deco area of Miami. This was really interesting and we certainly learned alot.

We had another great day!

Friday, Plantation Golf Preserve

We enjoyed dinner (using our groupon) at BBQ on the Beach. This was a nice casual dining area. Timothy - our waiter was very friendly doing his utmost to make our visit memoriable. He is pictured above with me. He was quite funny. The rib's were amazing as was the chicken. I also tasted the baby neck clam's which were awesome. This was a really nice place to visit.

We spent some time exploring South Beach during the afternoon. It was nice to see all the different shops. It was hot while walking but you were able to get relief from the fan's blowing from each of the different storefronts.

While driving to Southbeach this afternoon, Ralph pointed out that there was filming taking place on the highway and sure enough there was this camera truc right in front of us filming a Hummer - which was directly infront of it with a police escort. Do you think that this might have been CSI Miami??

I really have been feeling the heat and at the end of my golf game my t-shirts are soaked. I have never sweat as much as I have been the last two days. It's horrible. Not sure if this is sweating or me suffering from hot flashes... probably a little bit of both.

When we got to the golf course this morning - it was raining - a torrential downpour. We weren't sure we'd be able to play, but it stopped before our game started. Unfortunately we didn't golf with Rait - as when he called to join us they had already paired us with another two some. It's too bad that he didn't come as we would have changed our tee time to golf with him. I was a little nervous about playing with the two guys that we were paired up with but they turned out to be quite nice. Adam and Lee were graduating this week from University - they had both studied to be anestisys - (not sure I spelled right - but very similar to studying anestesiology). Adam grew up in Florida and Lee was from Minnesota. Both were very nice guys. We had a great game all together. Ralph and I both played well and I'm happy with our scores.

Thursday - Deer Creek Golf Course

I have to share a story about these two hawks. We approached the "ladies" tee and sitting on the tee box was two hawks. We were amazed. They looked like young birds. They really weren't interested in the leaving the tee box until I was almost 6 feet in front of them. It was so beautiful to see them.

We were up early and when we walked out to our car, we were convinced that we wouldn't be golfing today. The sky was black. We weren't too keen on the idea of golfing through a thunderstorm, but we figured we'd see what happens with the weather so we drove to the golf course. We got to the course around 7:45 and amazingly the sky cleared. It was actually a little cool at first and we were looking forward to a nice round of golf. We were paired up with a gentleman from Switzerland who we thoroughly enjoyed golfing with. We made arrangements to meet him again tomorrow at the Plantation Golf Preserve. He's golfed there already so it will nice to be with someone who knows the course. Rait has been here for 7 weeks already and is heading back home on Saturday.

Dinner was at D. Rodriguous Cuba in South Beach. This is authentic Cuban fare and it was delicious. I had something called Crispy skin pork which reminded me of "Mom's" cooking when we were little and she made the "spec fet". It brought back a lot of memories. We sat outside on the patio and enjoyed the beautiful weather although, Ralph insists that there were lots of mosquito's biting him. After dinner we strolled along the beachfront. What a busy area.

It was a fun day!

We've arrived

I was up early - 3:00 a.m. according to our alarm clock and the 2nd and 3rd time I looked at it, it was also 3:00 a.m. so I assumed that it wasn't working. We were at the airport by 8:30 and were able to check our bag's at the curbside check in. How awesome is that!! Within 5 minutes from unloading to checking in and we were done!

Our flight was delayed by about 30 minutes because of issues in Florida - volumes at the airport, but otherwise, very uneventful. We arrived and our first impression was how hot it was. It actually isn't the heat but the humidity that is high. The air is very thick.

We found our hotel which is located at Hallandale beach and then went for a walk through a neighboring area. There were restaurants and shops that we thought might be interesting. From there were drove to Fort Lauderdale beach where we were planning on eating dinner.

Dinner was amazing. We chose to sit outside under the canapy as it was raining out. Not hard, but a steady downpour. We watched the lightening out over the ocean. It was quite beautiful. We at at Shula's on the Beach - I would highly recommend it. The scallops were so sweat and the grouper melted in your mouth. What a great way to start the holiday.

Tomorrow we have our first round of golf. We'll be at Deer Creek Golf Resort. Our tee-off is set for 8:30 so we can sleep in a bit before our round. It's our plan after that to head to South Beach in Miami where we have dinner reservations at D. Rodrigous Cuba which should be interesting. We're really looking forward to the day.

Miami Bound

We headed for Buffalo around 12:15 this afternoon. The traffic was good until we hit the border at Queenston Lewiston where the traffic and lineups were really long. We waited about an hour to cross the border. This is a first for us as it is usually never very busy. We were patient, and I enjoyed reading out recipes to Ralph from the new Fine Cooking magazine that we received from Teresa, Lawrence and Sandra. There are some very good recipes in there.


We spent the afternoon browsing some of the shops in Buffalo and enjoyed a nice leisurely dinner at Hydes Steakhouse. The food was very good and very filling.


Our hotel is right next to the airport so we'll be able to sleep in a little tomorrow before our flight. It was a nice relaxing day and a good start to our vacation.


We are experiencing some problems with the computer that Ralph has, so right now we can download pictures. Hopefully we can fix this tomorrow.

Two more sleeps

Well only two more days to go and we're off on vacation. We're both happily looking forward to that. Follow along with us as we explore the cities of Fort Lauderdale and Miami.