Thinking about renting a house or condo for vacation?

We are home from Florida, and Rob is sorting through the thousands of photos we shot. Our goal of posting something profound every day during our trip didn't really work out, but our brains are out of vacation mode now and we're ready for some serious blogging.

I want to start out by giving a little background on the place we stayed. For the first time, we decided to rent a condo rather than stay in a hotel. I don't know why we have never done this before--we are a little slow, I guess. We rented a 2-bedroom, 2-bath beachfront condo for 9 nights for $1070. That's about $119 per night. We never would have been able to get even a single hotel room on the beach for that price.

Having a full kitchen meant we didn't have to eat out every day, which saved us even more money. Naturally we sampled the local restaurants, but just having the ability to eat breakfast and make cocktails at "home" saved us a lot of dough. The condo also had a much homier feel than most hotel rooms--orange walls, down comforters, even some books and games and beach toys.

There are, of course, downsides to renting a condo. The most obvious one is that you have to do your own cleaning--there's no maid service to clean your room every day and provide you with fresh linens, and you need to leave the place in decent condition when you go.

The other is that you can't be entirely sure of what you will get. We rented our condo through a site called http://www.vacationrentals.com (the specific listing is here: http://www.vacationrentals.com/vacation-rentals/62323.html). There are quite a few sites that list vacation house home rentals, including http://www.vrbo.com and http://www.homeaway.com/

The nice thing about these kinds of sites is that customers can post reviews. But even those are iffy--some listings (like ours) don't have any reviews on them. And even if there are reviews, of course, you don't know how reliable the reviewer is. They could be a good friend--or enemy--of the owner.

You can, of course, request references from a potential renter and call these people yourself. We didn't do that, but it's a good idea.

Rob had a good gut feeling about the owner when he talked to her on the phone, and we went with it. His gut did not steer him wrong. The condo looked exactly like the photos, had all the amenities listed, and really was right on the beach. We weren't smack dab in the middle of South Beach nightlife (we were further north, in Surfside) but that was fine with us--we wanted quiet, relaxing, and family-friendly. There were never more than a handful of people on our beach. And we loved being able to just go downstairs and jump in the ocean for a swim before breakfast. We didn't have to pack a big bag of stuff and plan for a daylong excursion.

We were on the 8th floor and the two balconies afforded us great views--the ocean to the left, and the city to the right.

If you are thinking about doing a vacation rental for yourself, try these sites for tips:

http://goflorida.about.com/od/hotelslodging/a/vacationrentals.htm

This one has a lot of information relevant to Florida, but also good advice in general.

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/hotels/2009-03-19-vacation-rental-tips_N.htm

Also, if you are interested in a property, you can check out "Vacation Rentals Watchdog" to see if other renters have complained about it:

http://www.vrwd.org/

We are in the air today...

...but one more picture from the shores of Miami. Many many more stories and photos to follow from our 9 days in South Florida!

Today we went to the Everglades

Many more to follow, Diane had the best picture today and you will see it soon.

--Rob

Day one in the Keys

We spent Thursday and Friday exploring the Florida Keys, a chain of islands off of Florida's southern coast. Originally we planned to stay on the Keys, but changed our minds and opted for Miami Beach because it's a better swimming beach. The Keys are an amazing ecological treasure, and they are fabulous for water sports, but they are not known for sandy swimming beaches.

They did make for a fantastic side trip, however. The Keys are full of funky, kitschy places like a set of gift shops on Key Largo with a giant crustacean out front.



We stopped for lunch at a little place along route 1, also known as the only real road in the Keys. There are a lot of parts of the Keys where you are driving down the road, and there is just enough room for a house or a business on each side of the street--behind which is ocean on either side.

Anyway, for lunch I tried the conch fritters. Conch (pronounced "conk") is a big deal in the Keys, also known as the "Conch Republic." You know those giant, spirally seashells you can put up to your ear to hear the ocean? Yeah, that's conch, and it's a rather big deal in the Keys, as evidenced by businesses named "Conch Cottages" or "Konch Kuts" (a hair salon).

Sadly, I was unmoved by this particular shellfish, as it was quite chewy. Kind of like octopus.



Of course I also had to sample some authentic Key lime pie. By the way, Key lime pie is NOT supposed to be green.

We had planned to spend the afternoon snorkeling off of Key Largo, but we missed the noon tour and didn't want to wait around until the 3:00 outing, so we decided to flip things around and explore the Keys on Thursday, snorkeling on Friday. This meant we needed to get down to Key West in time to catch the Hemingway House before it closed (it's open from 9-5, seven days a week) and to see the sunset, which is celebrated nightly there.

Here is a shot of Bunny in a mangrove swamp:



Driving the Keys is a pretty amazing experience. You can see ocean on both sides of you for a large percentage of the journey. You can also see little islands all along the way.





We stopped to see the beach at Bahia Honda State Park on the way to Key West. I had read that it has been rated one of the best beaches in the U.S. Although it was one of the better beaches on the Keys, we were not overly impressed. Miami Beach is much better in terms of swimming beaches. Still, we stopped for a dip before moving on.

I think that's enough for one post. I will write about Key West another day.

P.S. Happy anniversary Rob! The past 13 years have been the journey of a lifetime!

A few shots from today's visit to the Keys

Top Down: Diane floating, Sunset at Key West, The happy family enjoying the Key West sunset.

Miami skyline

The Miami skyline view from our Condo.

-- Rob

Today is officially "lazy day." Nick and I had a late morning swim in the ocean, and have spent the afternoon playing games and reading. I'm considering a nap before we head down the beach again when the sun's not so strong.

Our beach is not crowded at all. There were maybe 4 or 5 people there in the late morning.

Tomorrow we are planning to head down to the Keys. There will be snorkeling on Key Largo, and then we will head down to catch the sunset on Key West. We'll spend the night there and take our time coming back up here the following day. Rob got a new underwater camera for the trip, so I'm hoping we can get some great shots from our snorkeling trip!

--Diane

Miami Beach day 1

I am lying in bed in a room that overlooks Miami Beach. Life is good.

We spent most of today traveling. We left Phoenix at 8 this morning and flew first to Austin. On the flight, I pondered the irony of traveling from a hot desert to a hot tropical region, but having to bring a sweatshirt just to survive the freezing cold airplane. We flew Southwest because we got a good deal, but we did shell out an extra $60 ($10 per person per flight) to get the early-bird check-in. We didn't want to risk not getting seats together.

In Austin we had lunch at the exact same BBQ place (The Salt Lick) where I ate with Conrad on the way back from the URMA conference last year.

From Austin we flew into Ft. Lauderdale, picked up our rental car, and drove down to the condo we are renting. I've heard some horror stories about condo rentals, but Rob had a good gut feeling about this landlady and he was not led astray. This place is beautiful--two bedrooms, two baths, full kitchen, and right smack dab on the beach. After getting into the apartment and wolfing down some KFC we picked up on the way in, we raced down to the beach to get in our first swim before dark. The water was warm and the sunset lit up the sky in fiery orange.

Bliss.

We went out tonight to get groceries for the week. Sadly, the Publix doesn't carry hard alcohol and the liquor store was closed for the night. Luckily, a former guest at our condo left about half a bottle of tequila in the freezer, so Rob can still have margaritas tonight. I'm sure Coronas will be enough for me. Despite it only being 8 p.m. our time, I'm exhuasted.

We lugged our groceries up to the 8th floor in a bellhop cart that was sitting by the elevator in the garage. I'm so glad we didn't have to make multiple trips, although I did lose the rock-paper-scissors contest to see who had to bring it back downstairs.


Tomorrow morning I think I'll jump in the ocean again while my coffee brews.

--Diane (photos, of course, by Rob)

Florida Here We Come

This was shot years ago at my home beach in Northwest Florida (which soon will see balls of oil :-().

We however, are headed for the East Coast and Miami Beach in just 48 hours. And I cannot wait!

U.S. proposing new regulations on airlines

The Obama administration is proposing new rules for airlines that would require them to pay customers more for being bumped, be more transparent about baggage fees, and limit the amount of time planes can sit on the tarmac before returning passengers to the terminal.

Read more here.

These don't really address most of my biggest beefs with flying, but it's nice to know the government is at least trying to make the experience more pleasant for the consumer.