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Miami Beach

My son Tim got married to his fiance Yanet about a year ago. It was just a small civil ceremony. No family or friends. They did want to have a celebration of their marriage, so they planned an event for this spring. That would give family and friends from around the country time to make plans to attend. They looked at various options to make it special. A destination wedding. A cruise. They finally settled on a more typical wedding celebration. They live in Miami Beach, which is kind of a destination anyway. They picked out an impressive venue. The date was set for early May.

Tim and Yanet live on Collins Avenue, one of the main streets in South Beach. I was able to reserve three rooms at the Ocean Reef Suites for Sandy and I, Mickey and Ally, and Shannon and Jimmy. That was our side of the family. The Ocean Suites were a perfect location. The hotel is next door to the condo where Tim and Yanet live. Literally next door. As an added bonus, it even has an Italian restaurant on the ground floor. You can't do better than that.

We decided to make it an extended weekend to give us extra time in Miami Beach. We flew out on a Thursday. It's a long way to go, and traveling east against the time change, we didn't get there until early evening. Sandy and I had dinner at Il Pastaiolo. It claims to be the best Italian restaurant in Miami Beach. I don't know about that. There are a lot of Italian restaurants in Miami Beach. It was very good though. It was on the ground floor of the Ocean Suites, with seating outside on a patio right alongside the sidewalk on Collins Avenue. The location couldn't be more convenient, and it was a fantastic spot for people watching. In fact, just as we were finishing, two very interesting people walked by, Tim and Yanet on their way home. They hadn't been able to join us for dinner as they had a lot of prep to do, but they did invite us over to see their place. The location is amazing, only a block from Ocean Drive and the beach. In the back, they had quite a sunset view from their patio.

After visiting Tim and Yanet's place, we went for a walk. Sandy is usually not a night person, but since we were still on Mountain Time, it seemed early for us. South Beach is busy during the day but it really comes alive at night. There were lots of people everywhere, so we felt safe walking around at night. We scouted out the area. We found the closest minimart, so I could get Diet Cokes for the fridge in our room. We walked toward the beach and then along Ocean Drive. The street was lined with hotels, restaurants and bars. Everything was lit up. We checked out the tshirt shops, and there were quite a few good ones. They were open late too. I was going to have some tough decisions to make about which ones to get. There were people everywhere. Miami Beach is definitely a party place. Most importantly, I found The Baked Bear which made ice cream cookie sandwhiches. We had to stop there for dessert. They were awesome. I will confess that I went back there every night while we were in South Beach, no matter how late it was.

Our Friday morning was free. It was a sunny day so we decided to go for a walk by the ocean. Miami Beach really is a beautiful beach, and there is a nice walking/bike path beside it that goes for miles. There are a lot of people of course, but the area is pretty. On the way back we explored much further down Collins Avenue than we had the night before. We found even more shops, and a lot of them sold souvenirs. Now I had more tshirts to choose from. I was going to have to make some tough decisions.

That afternoon Shannon and Jimmy, and Mickey and Allie flew in. A lot of other guests were arriving from out of town as well, so Tim had planned a group trip to the Miami Marlins game. Sandy and I are Brewer fans, but not really baseball fans in general. We passed on the game and so did Shannon and Jimmy. The four of us found a restaurant on Ocean Drive and had a good dinner. Don't ask me which restaurant. The whole street is lined with them.

Mickey and Allie went with the group going to the ball game. Mickey knew a lot of Tim's old high school friends who were there, so it was a chance for him to catch up with them after a lot of years.

Saturday was pretty well planned out. Mickey and I and some of Tim's friends were going to his "bachelor party". It was unique, to say the least. For the past year or so, he had spent most of his Saturdays working on a dive boat operating out of Miami Beach marina. He booked the boat so that all of us could go diving. There were about eight of us all together.

Getting everyone ready was pretty hectic. Tim had to take some of his friends to a dive shop that was quite far away to do their Discover Scuba preperation. Mickey and I just went to the boat dock and hung out there for a while. Tim had quite a job herding everyone along and making sure they had all the gear they needed. He managed it and eventually we got on the boat and headed out to the dive sites.

Mickey and I made a dive trip to Bonaire in February. One thing I tried to do there was make sure that I was ready for this dive trip. I was significantly older than Tim and all of his friends. I didn't want to be the old guy who needed help. I worked on my buoyancy and trim a lot in Bonaire.

Well, not enough, I guess. When we started to descend, I had trouble getting down. The water was colder here than in Bonaire and I had a heavier wet suit. It turned out that I didn't add enough weight to compensate for the extra buoyancy. I could have just gone back to the boat and gotten more weight but I got out instead. The water was pretty rough and the boat was bouncing up and down. I would have needed to get back in the boat, get more weights, put them on, and go back in the water. I didn't want to make everyone wait for me. That was exactly what I had wanted to avoid. So I just signaled them to go ahead and I skipped the dive.

I was bummed after aborting the first dive, so I didn't bother going on the second dive either. I got to chat a lot with the boat captain, who was an interesting guy, but I was very disappointed that I had not done well. Tim had been excited about showing the local diving to all of us. I had tried hard to practice and get everything right, but when I was in the water I decided that the best thing was to not push it. At least I didn't hold the group back.

When we got back we went to Monty's Sunset, a restaurant/bar on the marina right where the dive boat docked. Families of all the guys on the dive boat showed up, as well as some folks who were in town for the wedding but hadn't been out diving. Sandy, Shannon and Jimmy met me there. Shannon and Jimmy had rented bikes that afternoon. They rode north on the bike path until they came upon a nude beach. Shannon sounded pretty excited about it. Might be something that gets her to move to Miami Beach. She didn't take photos though so I can't vouch for how true her stories were. Sandy spent the afternoon walking along the ocean and was disappointed she missed the nude beach.

Monty's was pretty informal. It was a place you could go when you were still wet because you just came off a dive boat. They have a small pool there, and Tim said that when the dive shop used to be next door, they used to do their pool sessions right there at the bar. People can be in casual clothes, swim suits, gym clothes or fancy dress, all in the same place. That's kind of the way all of South Beach is.

After we walked back from dinner, our family went to South Beach Brewing Company, a craft brewery a block from our hotel. We had a few beers and hung out. It was a warm night and very pleasant sitting out.

The next day was the Big Day. We started with a family breakfast at Cafe Americano. We appreciated that even with all the out of town company, Tim and Yanet were able to get away for some time with just our family. Afterwards they had to take off because they had a million things to do. Sandy and I took an afternoon walk along the ocean.

The event was at Smith & Wollensky's. It would have been a long walk. Since the ladies were wearing dresses that weren't ideal hiking wear, we took an Uber with Jimmy and Shannon. It was a fantastic venue, right on the water near South Pointe. It was a wonderful evening. A good dinner. Drinks. A chance to reconnect with some people we hadn't seen for a long time, and to meet new folks on the other side of the new family. We took lots of photos. An excellent celebration of Tim and Yanet's marriage.

Something that made the evening interesting was that the wedding couple wanted all of the parents to sit at the same table with them. It was the best spot in the house, right next to the window with a great view out over the water. My ex-wife was there with her husband and she wasn't too happy about the idea. It was a round table and it was left up to us to work out the seating arrangements. Yanet's parents didn't speak much English, so they obviously had to sit together next to her. Tim's mom sat next to him, then her husband Vern, then me, then Sandy. That actually worked ok as Vern and I are actually old friends. We worked together for years at HP. We played on the same softball team for many seasons. We even spent a couple of summers climbing together in the Alps. For obvious reasons we don't get to hang out any more, so we actually enjoyed the chance to talk about old times. I did get the evil eye from my ex-wife a couple of times though.

Back in the mid-eighties, while I was living in England, Vern would fly over and we would take a month off from work to climb in the Alps. It was the most serious mountaineering I ever did. We climbed a lot of fantastic peaks, but our ultimate goal was always the Matterhorn. After trying for two years, we finally were successful. It was quite an achievement and something I will always be proud of. While we were on the summit, we had another climber take our picture. I still have that photo hanging on the wall in my office. It's right next to me as I type this. Vern feels the same way and has the same picture on his wall. Mickey and Tim always laugh when they tell people that their Dad and their Mom's current husband both have the same picture hanging on their walls, of the two of them together on a mountain. Vern and I even talked about it tonight. Vern said that my ex-wife (his wife) asked him once if he really needed to have that picture on his wall. His response was "Yes, I do." I guess that settled that.

The next morning, Jimmy and Shannon had an early flight home. It was the first time they had been away from home together since their kids were born and they had to get back to relieve the grandparents who were staying with the kids. Allie also had an early flight home. Unfortunately she had not been feeling well most of the weekend. She was still recovering from a serious illness a few weeks before and just wanted to get home.

Sandy and I took an early morning walk on the path along the beach. We heard "Good morning" from behind us. It was Tim, out for his morning run. He did stop long enough to take some pictures of us before continuing. Sandy and I can walk a long way, but our running days are behind us. And we did walk a long way. We went all the way to South Pointe Pier and walked to the end of it. We went by Smith & Wollensky, where we had the event the evening before, and finally Monty's and the dive boat dock in the marina before heading back.

After cleaning up, we met Tim, Yanet and Mickey for an early lunch at an Italian restaurant, Mecato della Pescheria. It's on Espanola Way, a pedestrian only street lined with restaurants, bars and ice cream places. Afterwards, Tim and Mickey left to spend the afternoon with their mom and her family. They had made the long trip to Miami Beach for the event as well so they needed to spend time with them.

We spent our last afternoon walking around South Beach, making our final purchases of tshirts and other souvenirs. Since it was Cinco di Mayo, we stopped at a Mexican restaurant, Don Sombrero, for margueritas and mojitos. We sat on the patio. All weekend we had been able to sit outside everywhere, enjoying the beautiful spring weather. We were right beside Collins Avenue, watching the incredible variety of people passing by.

At one point I said to Sandy "Don't be obvious, but check out the guy sitting a couple of tables away". It sure looked like Freddie Freeman. He was wearing a Los Angelos Dodgers tshirt, and a Dodgers World Series Champions baseball cap. Definitely circumstantial evidence. Sandy wasn't sure but agreed that it looked like him. Later an SUV pulled up, probably an Uber, and they left in that. A little unusual since it was mostly walk-in traffic at the restaurant. Unless you were going back to Miami, to somewhere near the stadium. I pulled out my phone for the real test - where were the Dodgers playing today? Sure enough, they were playing in Miami that night. Each MLB team plays a home and an away series each year against a team in their league but not in their division. That's 3 games out of 162 each season. The odds that the Dodgers would be playing in Miami on any given day during the season is less than 2%. I think that's pretty convincing. Oh, and Freddie went 2 for 5 with a home run that night and the Dodgers won 7-4. I guess a marguerite and some chips and salsa is good for the old batting average.

That was it. The wedding celebration had been great. It was good getting our family together. We don't do that often. Allie and Jimmy and Shannon had never met, nor had Yanet met any of them. I was disappointed that I was such a dork on the dive boat, but I'll survive. The long weekend in Miami Beach was fun. It was an interesting place to spend a couple of days, but it's way too party oriented to be a place we would visit often. I'm not sure if we'll ever go back. That's ok because we bought enough tshirts and other souvenirs to last us a long time.

Next morning was our trip home. We made it with no problems and, as always, Abby was glad to see us when we got home.