This time around I came solo, in desperate need for some R&R. Today was day 1. I arrived on an early flight and came to the Mondrian where I'm staying for a few days. If you're familiar with SoBe, the Mondrian is on the West St side of SoBe, not the ocean drive side where most of the hotels, restaurants and night scene reside. It's my first time staying on this side and I must say I've been pleasantly surprised. The Mondrian itself is really beautiful. It's relatively unmarked from the outside - if not for the taxi pulling up to the front and stopping I would not have known I was at the right place. The staff has been great so far - very friendly and pleasant. However I booked my stay (at an amazing rate) through a third party resort company (Jet Luxury Resorts) which I will not be doing again. Unfortunately, the hotel personnel have no ability to assist with third party reservations and couldn't accommodate my early check in request because they have limited visibility to rooms managed by third parties. This has to be the most ridiculous setup I've ever seen for a luxury hotel because it leaves the experience (which people will attribute to the hotel regardless of who they book through) out of their own control. This morning, I had to actually call the third party company (from the check in desk, which took 20 minutes before I was able to get a live person) and wait for them to call me back and tell me when the room was ready (which was not until 1pm on a 10:30am arrival).
In the meantime, I decided to head over to Lincoln Rd which I mistakingly thought was a lot closer than it really is. It was a good 7-8 block walk to get to the tail end of Lincoln Rd not to mention the walk across. In this hot Miami sun, I was not thrilled to discover this but I'm on vacation so oh well. My first stop was tea and a bagel at dunkin donuts (yeah I know I can get that anywhere but I'm a bit of a DD junkie). I actually sat there and took my time and enjoyed my food - wow, I can't remember the last time I did that. I'm usually in and out on my way to work or speeding through a drive thru en route somewhere. Ahhh, the simple pleasures in life. Next stop was to check out the Lincoln Rd scene. Apparently there is a Williams-Sonoma on Lincoln rd (who knew? That's definitely new since the last time I've been down on this end of Lincoln rd which admittedly has been a while). Given my new role in the gourmet food arena, I decided to check it out. Coming from NYC, it's definitely on the smaller side but I still managed to discover a few things of interest including a peach sangria mix that I will be buying when I get back to the city. I also hit up CB2 to check out some furniture for my new apartment (I move in a couple of weeks) and to mentally prepare myself for this furniture show I'm going to for work when I leave here.
Next stop was checking out the new Kevin Hart movie "Let Me Explain". I was in the mood for some comedy and Kevin never really disappoints although I could have probably saved my $12 and caught it on DVD in a couple months. I justified to myself that it was a lot cheaper than the tickets I almost purchased to see it live at the Garden (side note: I didn't act on my instinct of purchasing tickets immediately when they went on sale and ended up regretting it when the show sold out...although now that I've seen it I'm over it).
After the movie I had lunch at serendipity 3 (another new spot since my last visit to this end of Lincoln rd). I had a black and blue bbq burger with sweet potato fries and a mango mojito - all excellent although the mango had nothing on the ones from Yuca. My waiter was great (lots of energy - he was very disappointed that I didnt finish my burger but that thing was big lol). After lunch I headed back to the hotel and checked in which was relatively seamless this time around. Since it was pretty late in the afternoon at this point and I had been out in the sun most of the day my plans of sitting by the pool all afternoon didn't quite hold up. The last thing I wanted was to sit out in the hot sun. So I opted to sit out on my balcony which has a beautiful view of downtown Miami, Star Island, Biscayne Bay, and the hotel pool area which is gorgeous. I put on some sunscreen, got my magazines, my music and my drink and got comfy on the balcony but that lasted all of about 15 minutes. I looked down at my legs and the part that was covered by my magazine was a significantly different color than the part that was not covered...after all of 15 minutes! That was my sign to take my behind inside in the cool air conditioned room. After that was a bit of a blur because I passed out for a few hours. When I woke up it occurred to me that I never went to sleep the night before so my body was tired (the fact that this never occurred to me until my body actually shut down is concerning, I know). I was on the phone with crystal for a minute after I woke up coordinating her arrival and now I'm about to go find me some grub. Until later...
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