welcome to miami

on our last morning in orlando, the hub headed out early to pick up a rental car for the rest of our florida adventure.  the rest of us got all of our stuff packed up, did a final check around the rooms to make sure we hadn't left anything behind, and made our way out of the building.  and as luck would have it, there was a cast member who'd just dropped off other guests and offered to take us up to the front of the hotel to meet up with the hub.  pretty sweet for our final ride of this trip to disney world, amirite?

from one sweet ride to another - the hub had scored us this nice roomy suburban that would take us down to miami in comfort.  well, kind of.  the five of us would have fit nicely in there, but we also had all of our luggage and we just barely fit everything in.  

one last look at what had been home for the last five days:

bye, disney world!  till next time!

it was a three-hour drive to miami, during which we caught a pretty gnarly rainstorm:

and arrived around 3:00 that afternoon.

there was a ton of construction going on everywhere and we found ourselves circling around the hotel a couple of times before we finally found a way to get into the driveway.  we'd booked the confidante miami beach again, since we'd enjoyed it so much the last time we were here.

we can't come to miami and not hit up versailles.

it probably wasn't the best idea to have a coffee so late in the day, but i didn't care.  i'd waited three years for one of these delicious cortaditos, and i wasn't going to pass up my chance.

we shared a delicious platter of empanadas and croquettes:

and we ordered up some traditional favorites like roast chicken and lechon, capping it off with a nice serving of tres leches.

back at the hotel, we checked out the bar and the outdoor patio space for a few minutes before going back to the room and settling in after a long day.

and now i have the will smith song in my head again.  dang it.