Ruff stuff

Someone's very fierce doggie on Miami Beach during our vacation last summer.

--Rob

Yeah, it's kind of a boring shot, but I love clouds...and we don't get clouds like this in Arizona. Taken in Miami this summer before a big rain storm on the beach.

--Rob

We live on the biggest beach in the world

sadly it lacks water. :-) Our recent trip to Miami had some awesome body surfing waves.

--Rob

A different side of South Beach

I don't know why this shot of a fence on South Beach appeals to me, but then again, I'm a sucker for well formed curves.

--Rob

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!

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)