Mar 04
We just returned from a brief 5 day vacation in Florida. The main attraction was Grandma Minnie’s 90th Birthday Luncheon on Saturday, March 1, 2008. We flew down *late* Thursday night, to let the kids get the day in school, but that meant that by the time we: landed, got the luggage, took shuttle to pick up rental car, got rental car, found hotel, and check-in, it was after 1AM. That put us to sleep close to 1:30AM, pretty late, only 11:30 by MST standards, but all the same, a long day/night/journey.
Photos: A few good ones here | The whole suite here on kodakgallery
Some highlights from the trip:
- We managed at least 3 (by my count) trips to Ritter’s Custard. We never knew we were such custard fans until Ritter’s – we’re big custard fans. They have different flavors, so we get to try different ones. Miles’ loves their "Cubby Paws" – basically the Carvel "Flying Saucers" Aviva and I grew up with, this time filled with custard.
- We hit Dunkin’ Donuts 2-3 times. I don’t eat donuts, but apparently the rest of my family devours them! I do, however, love their iced coffee and Aviva and I shared a number of them throughout the trip.
- At this point, you can tell we’re "foodies," or at least people, from Denver, who seek out the food we love (and maybe miss) the most when we travel.. ok, back to the food report
- On Friday night, all 13 of us went to dinner at the local Ramblewood Diner. It’s as traditional of a diner as one could expect.. some notes:
- They didn’t have club soda for Josh – how could they not?
- Once Mack zeroed in on pancakes for dinner, all the boys wanted them
- The food was fine and I guess, in hindsight, we ate pretty inexpensive fare (I had a Greek salad), because the bill, not including tip, was $78 – for 12 people! (We had one infant who didn’t eat). It was chaos of course, trying to get orders in, feed, etc, but was fun. For my part, their rice pudding was top notch!
- Beverly Hills Cafe is a must stop while in FLA – this trip was no exception. We went for dinner there once, Aviva had her usual Chinese Chicken Salad, I had my usual Tropical Salad with Spicy Peanut Dressing, and the rolls were gone before they were cool. Pretty much as we had hoped, great food & rolls
- Grandma took us to Zuccarelli’s by her hours for lunch – which ended having some excellent pizza!
- We spent 3 nights at Hyatt Place (sort of mid-market economy Hyatt) – they had free wi-fi, a pretty weak continental breakfast offering, and huge flat screen TV’s in the bedroom, with HD content! WOW! The TVs also had a sweet A/V input center, you could hook basically anything up to the TV, IF you had brought the jacks to do so, and had need to do so. I had neither. I did managed one workout in their gym, which was a little sparse, but had cold water, good equipment and TVs on the equipment – a growing and welcome trend. The pool at the Hyatt looked ok, but when Miles and I went down to scout it out we learned one important fact about it – it was *not* heated. There would be no pool for us at the Hyatt.
- This was a points heavy trip! We used points for 2 of the 3 nights at the Hyatt Place and both nights at the Hilton Fort Lauderdale. For all my traveling, it pays off once in a while with upgrades and points galore. On top of this, we cashed in some amex points for a $300 Avis gift certificate, and managed to swing an upgrade. So whereas on prior trips I moaned, whined, and complained about the rental car, which was usually a giant American POS (think Chevy Malibu, Chevy HHR, Buick Rendezvous, etc), this time we got a Cadillac CTS, which was easy on the eyes, and pretty nice to drive. Good pick-up, brakes, and handling. I’d never buy one, but to rent one – that worked just fine. The bills for our trip went as follow:
- Hyatt – 3 nights – total bill $135, which covered the one night and taxes
- Rental car – $129 to us after $300 gift certificate
- Hilton – 2 nights, total bill was $94, which covered a breakfast, 2 nights of expensive valet parking @$29 per (ouch) and taxes
- The Hilton Fort Lauderdale was really awesome. It was all points and as Gold VIP, they put us in a queen studio. That meant a queen sized bed for adults, in its own room, and a living room with a nice sized pull out couch. The studio part implied a FULL kitchen, with fridge, oven, microwave and dishwasher. In addition, it had a powder room for the kiddies and a massive bathroom for the grown-ups, with full glass shower, awesome giant tub with jets, double sink – very nice. The room had 2 connected balconies with solid ocean views, not directly facing, but a good enough angle to see plenty. The hotel was right across the street from the beach and had a very nice pool on the 6th floor, but it was kind of windy to swim. I also worked out in their gym, which was great. To top it off, the hotel had Lavazza coffee in the rooms! A small one or two cup brew machine – wow, and as I made it both mornings, I can tell you, it was good. The Hilton had 2 big LG flat screens! One in the living room and one in the bedroom, but neither had any true HD content.
- Grandma’s party was on Saturday at a modest looking Italian restaurant called "Verdi’s" near her apartment. It was a set menu and her friends took no chances and arrived early, lest they risk missing out on some of the free food. The food was good overall, well better than the look you got from the restaurant itself. Also, the waitress was nice enough to get us beers and drinks, those helped! The cake was very good, from Publix naturally, and I made a small speech to let everyone know how much we all appreciated our Grandma Minnie, and how lucky we all were to have her as our Grandma.
- We decided to return home a little early, so rather than take the 5:35PM flight, which would have us home at 8:30 or 9PM, on a work/school night, we took the 6:45AM flight, which was a bit of a pain, waking the kids and getting ourselves to return the car, get to the airport, make stand-by and depart at 6:45AM – it all went off without a hitch.
- We had lots of cousin time!
- Breakfast with the Lynn’s – Jared, Jonathan and Jason, as well as parents Jack Lynn & Jen Lynn (see an initial pattern here?)
- Dinner with cousins Douglas, Nicole, and Seth
- Countless meals, playtime, and swimming with cousins Nathaniel and Anderson, as well as Oliver, and their parents, Jenne & Jorge and Josh & Juli respectively
- Packing was less than our usual high levels of success. Somehow we forgot my boxers and Mack’s "nice" shirt for the birthday party. Thankfully – Target helped me and Cousin Jared lent Mack a shirt – problems solved.
- At the beach hotel, we saw lots of cool cars, including a new Audi R8, a Cadillac Escalate looking go-cart for rides up and down the strip, a guy doing some cool para-surfing, tons of giant ships with all sorts of cargo, a few cruise ships and a bunch of large charter fishing boats (we need to do that on a future trip!)
- The boys had a blast swimming in the pool – it’s been a few months since they got to do any real swimming, so they loved it
- The return flight was actually great. We were greeted at the check-in terminals by a nice guy who helped us take care of everything, including getting us economy plus seat! Then, Captain Tim from United was awesome, giving the kid cards about our Airbus A320, as well as plastic wing pins for the kinds – it had been years since we remember the kids getting wings from an airline!
- I saw a co-worker on the flight – naturally once of the few other Jewish folk from the CO office was in Florida visiting HIS grandmother
All in all, it was a bit of a whirlwind time, seeing lots of people, trying to hit our favorite Florida eateries (you can tell, we were successful with that part), and trying to squeeze in a little R&R along the way (less successful there), but much fun was had by all and seeing my Grandma with all 3 grandchildren and all 5 great grandchildren running around her apartment and swimming her pool was quite a present. On top of that, we all snuck to babies-r-us for a few family pictures of us and the kids alone for her – they made us wait longer than we had hoped, but the picture ended up being great – actually 2 pictures, one of the 11 of us (#12 is still on the way), and one of the 5 great grandsons – this family is about to go 6 for 6, all boys from 3 different families.
