Our 2025 Anniversary Trip – Arrival & Day 1

For our last two anniversary trips, travelling in October or November provided us with a very nice but on the cold side adventure.  This year, I suggested to my wife that we go somewhere warm to celebrate our 46^th anniversary.  For several years we had been talking about travelling to Miami, a city neither of us had been to before.  Finally, after Thanksgiving, we were able to plan a trip there.

But making our plans so late in the year, we ended up having to shorten the number of days of our trip as we would be celebrating our anniversary just days before Christmas—a challenge we have dealt with for many years considering our wedding was just three days before Christmas.  Once we had settled on Miami, we next needed to find a hotel.  After staying in old historic hotels for some of our recent trips, I explored what were the five most historic hotels in Miami.  Once I found those, I discovered that three of them were available through our airline’s vacation website.

We ended up choosing the 1950s Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, a complex of four different towers (at the time I did not know that all five hotels were actually in Miami Beach, a separate municipality from Miami).  We flew down from Memphis exactly a week before Christmas and checked into our room in the Sorrento Tower.  When we walked in our room, we immediately knew this was not the right room.

When we booked our air-hotel package with our airline, we paid extra to receive a room with an ocean view, not a view of a pool.  I quickly called guest services explaining the situation and after a hold of several minutes, was told to return to the reception area to receive keys to our new room.  When we arrived, we knew this was the right room.

In addition to the nice view, we were very pleased with the luxury accommodations (in 2008, the hotel did a 1-billion-dollar renovation of the fifty-year-old property).

As we made our way to the lobby bar to begin our anniversary celebration, I was pleased to discover a hallway filled with famous pictures of “Ol’ Blue Eyes”, one of my favorite jazz singers.

When we booked the hotel, I had no idea that Frank Sinatra had performed at the Fontainebleau or that he even had filmed three different pictures there (the gentleman dressed alike to his left is his stunt man).  Turns out, we had just missed by a week a special celebration of his 110^th birthday.  When we entered the bar, we could see upstairs there was even a Sinatra room.

In the elegant bar…

…we toasted the beginning of our celebration with our favorite cocktail, an Old Fashioned.

Afterwards, we walked to a restaurant just down the street where I commented how nice it was to dine outdoors at night in December.

The next morning, we talked about what to do to entertain ourselves over the two full days we had.

After we booked our trip, we had only discussed in general terms some of the things we thought we might want to do.  We did not make any advance reservations anywhere.  And since our hotel charged $75 a night to park a car, we chose not to rent a car and thus knew we would be relying on local transportation options.

After a brief discussion, we both agreed what we wanted to see first was the art deco buildings in South Beach and so we set off walking south from our hotel to first come across the art deco National Hotel, another historic hotel from the 1930s that was an option we could have chosen.

After walking about 26 blocks in what was becoming a hot day, we figured out how to use the free trolleys Miami Beach offered and rode one down to the middle of South Beach.  When we got there, we were just blown away by the buildings.  Everywhere we looked, there were unique buildings to be seen.

My wife suggested we visit the Art Deco Welcome Center where there was a museum.

Inside was a comfortably air-conditioned small museum with a number of historical artifacts.  We learned about the origins of the art deco style, who the most famous builders were, and how the designs evolved over the years.  One display that particularly interested me was architectural models of some of the more famous buildings.

But the most interesting things we learned was from one of the films available for viewing.  In this we learned of the gallant efforts taken by Barbara Baer Capitman, who along with other like-minded citizens, created an organization to fight developers from tearing down the old buildings and putting up high-rises to mirror those in Miami rising above Biscayne Bay.  Sadly, before she and others were successful in their efforts, some of the most beautiful buildings were taken down.  But once the organization was able to block future destruction, it was acknowledged that without their diligent efforts, the largest concentration of art deco buildings in the US would have been lost to just another row of modern high-rises.  Leaving, I told my wife that we needed to read more about this woman and her efforts.

Afterwards, we stopped off for a photo to document the warm weather we were enjoying less than a week before Christmas.

On our way back to our hotel later in the day, we saw more beautiful buildings and when we came back to the National, we decided to explore inside thinking we would possibly choose this hotel on another trip here.

Once we got back to our hotel, we decided to sit out by the pool and enjoy an adult beverage before walking along the ocean collecting shells for our granddaughter.

That night, after walking over 16,000 steps, we decided to walk no further than to a restaurant in the hotel before settling down on our balcony for some relaxing evening reading.

     To be continued…