After spending just over a week in Orlando, Shae and I made our way southeast to Miami. Shae had visited the city more than a decade ago, but I’d never been other than flying through Miami airport.
With terrible weather sweeping through much of the country in January, we were very glad to have the sun and sea to enjoy during our week there. We didn’t explore the city too much, instead just enjoying the property we were staying at and its location in Sunny Isles Beach.
Where We Stayed
We stayed all week at this condo we booked through Vacasa. We’d liked the look of it on the Vacasa website, but in person it was even nicer than we’d expected.
The high-rise condo building had amenities like a swimming pool, outdoor games area, fitness room, laundry, etc. The part that we most enjoyed though was waking up the next morning to this view (we’d arrived after dark the night before).
The cost for this condo was $299.95 per night. That’s far more than our 50 state road trip budget of $125 per day would allow, but thankfully we had a workaround.
Vacasa has a partnership with Wyndham Rewards where you can redeem 15,000 Wyndham points per night for every bedroom of a Vacasa property. That means a two bedroom property costs 30,000 points per night, a three bedroom costs 45,000 points per night, etc. This condo was nice and spacious, but only had one bedroom which meant it only cost 15,000 points per night. What made the value even better is that I have a Wyndham Rewards Earner Business credit card which gives a 10% discount on award bookings, so it actually only cost us 13,500 Wyndham Rewards points per night – an absolute steal!
What We Did
Everglades National Park
Sunny Isles Beach is on the east side of Miami, while Everglades National Park is to the west. We’d originally planned to visit the Everglades a couple of weeks later when returning to the west side of Miami, but we rejigged some of our plans and so needed to fit it in during this week in Sunny Isles Beach.
We started out by taking an airboat tour with Coopertown Airboat Tours…
…and then drove to Shark Valley Visitor Center within the National Park and took a walk along one of its trails where we got to see several gators by the side of the path.
Check out this post for even more details about our fun day out there.
Sunny Isles Beach
The condo where we were staying was only a block or two from the beach, so it was nice being able to walk over there. Unfortunately it’s not pet-friendly on the beach, so Truffles had to stay behind.
South Beach
Another day we headed out to South Beach to wander around and were treated to a beautiful day. We had Truffles with us and pups aren’t allowed on the beach, but I took a quick look and was surprised that it wasn’t busier on the beach.
Ocean Drive had a nice pedestrian – and pet-friendly – walkway that ran alongside the beach though, so we explored along there, enjoying the art deco architecture.
Where We Ate & Drank
We were due to head down to Key West after visiting Miami and knew we’d want to eat out and go drinking down there which meant our budget would take a big hit. As a result, in Miami we mostly took advantage of the nice kitchen in our condo to make meals ourselves. We did have a nice meal out though while there, plus we stopped at an excellent cidery on the way in to Miami.
Yardbird Table & Bar
Shae and her mom have eaten at a Yardbird in Washington D.C. and loved it, so Shae was keen on having me try it out in Miami. It’s available in the inKind app and I still had a lot of inKind referral credits available which meant we could eat there for free – similar to The Hampton Social in Orlando.
They had an interesting whiskey flight option which piqued my curiosity. They have half a dozen house-infused bourbons and you can pick three for a whiskey flight tasting. I chose Bacon Wild Turkey, Applewood Smoked Woodford Reserve and Dark Chocolate Knob Creek. I wouldn’t buy a full bottle of these flavors, but it was fun getting to try them all; the dark chocolate one was my favorite.
Shae went for a Desert Rose cocktail which contained Corazón Reposado tequila, strawberry, hibiscus, pink peppercorn and lime – she thought it was delicious.
For our appetizers Shae got their deviled eggs which she’d had at Yardbird in D.C. and loved…
…while I ordered their South Florida smoked fish dip which contained smoked trout roe, house pickles, house crackers and Old Bay oil. This was tasty and much more filling than I’d been anticipating.
We both enjoyed our appetizers, but were both a bit let down by our entrées. Shae got their ribeye steak frites which was a 16 oz ribeye steak, parmesan truffle fries and harissa butter. She ordered the steak medium rare, but it came out more like medium well. Looking at the photo now, it also looks smaller than a 16 oz steak, but perhaps the photo is misleading.
One of Yardbird’s specialties is their rotisserie bird which is chicken with chimichurri, lemon and ancho chili marinade on a bed of mashed potato. This sounded delicious and flavorful and so is what I ordered, but it tasted much more bland than I’d been expecting.
We also ordered a couple of sides – grilled asparagus and blackened green beans with piquillo pepper sauce, cajun spice, lime and cilantro. The green beans were pretty good, although a little over-blackened for my liking. Some of the asparagus was good, but some of the stalks were pretty much impossible to eat.
Yardbird redeemed themselves a little with their dessert options. We got a slice of bourbon bacon chocolate cake which has Nutella frosting, bourbon salted caramel and vanilla ice cream.
As you can probably tell from the photo above, this is an enormous slice. To give an even better idea, the photo below has Shae’s head for scale! We only ate a little and took the rest to go; this lasted a couple more days as it was too rich to eat in one go.
Pierced Ciderworks
OK, so this isn’t in Miami. Instead, it’s about two hours north in Fort Pierce. I wanted to highlight it in this post though because a) we stopped there on our way down to Miami and b) it was excellent!
Shae is more of a cider drinker than I am, so I only tried each of the ciders. However, each of them was very good and – even better – you can get an enormous flight where you can try each flavor that they serve. In fact, this was one of the very best cideries we’ve been to on the road trip, so it’s definitely worth a stop if you’ll be in the area.
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