Florida, day 8: shopping day

We started the day with breakfast together with our new friends, the general-manager of the hotel and his family. It was a shame we didn't have more time to get to know them better, and the kids really did play well together. It was especially fun to watch our daughter and their son on their "dates."

Since my husband's conference was over, we'd originally planned to leave Miami today, but we couldn't find anywhere to stay in the Everglades where we wanted to go. We would have to drive back to Miami or equally far on to Naples, so we stayed in Miami. We were considering changing to a cheaper hotel, but our new friends offered us a "comp." The mom thought that as a photographer, I'd appreciate a room with a better view. Being the perpetual bargain hunter, it doesn't get any better than a free night's stay in a nice hotel, so I was thrilled. We were to pack up our stuff and leave it in our room when we went out for the day. When we came back, our stuff would be in our new room.

There was another Harbor Freight Tools in the Miami area, and since the one we'd been to on Wednesday didn't have everything on my husband's list, we went there first. We foolishly trusted the car's GPS, so it took us a lot longer to get here than we'd expected. After that, we went to the Dolphin Outlet Mall in search of pants for my husband and shoes for my daughter (and me, but that was less urgent). My daughter found a good pair of shoes, but I never really got a chance for a proper look since the Sketchers outlet was crowded and a bit disorganized. We ate a late lunch at Johnny Rockets, a 50's style diner. That had been one of our favorite restaurants in San Diego, but they went out of business years ago, so this was a nice treat. I had a tuna melt and a chocolate malt. Yum! It was raining by the time we'd completed our pants mission, so we went back to the hotel.

Our new room was the Presidential Suite on the top (21st) floor, and it truly was sweet! The views of downtown and waterfront were incredible! The suite had a "normal" sized room as the bedroom, plus another room double that size with two sitting areas (one with a TV) and a dining area. Our previous room was nice, but this was really beautiful. I especially liked the bathroom. Let's just say, I could get used to this! I'm grateful we were given this opportunity, because it's probably something I never would have experienced otherwise.

Our daughter camped out on the king sized bed watching a "Wizards of Waverly Place" marathon on the Disney channel, and we watched "27 dresses" in the living room. We weren't hungry for dinner, so we just had a couple cookies instead.