Florida

December 16 – 24, 2013

Ying and I took an American Airlines redeye flight to Miami arriving a 6:30 AM on December 16, 2013.  We rented a car at the airport and headed north on 95.  We had not slept well on the plane so Ying slept most of the trip.  We stopped for breakfast at a Cracker Barrel just south of Boca Raton, and then continued another 45 minutes to Port St. Lucie on the Atlantic Coast.  We arrived at Club Med Sandpiper Bay before noon and were able to get into our room right away.

Sandpiper Bay is Club Med’s only facility in the continental USA.  Located on the St. Lucie River, it is a sprawling tennis and golf facility that also boasts water sports, a circus school and lots of activities for kids.  We are here for the last four days of the low season before the Christmas rush so there are not too many people here presently.

After a very good lunch at the Marketplace buffet, we headed over to the tennis courts and were able to participate in the afternoon challenge match.  Sixteen people participated so we had four courts and played for just over an hour.  There are guests here from Canada, Europe, Mexico and the USA.  There are also close to 100 junior tennis players from all over the world, who are under the watchful eyes of a half-dozen pros.  They play mornings and afternoons and are very good.

We ate dinner at the Marketplace again Monday evening.  Although the restaurant is buffet style, there are a half-dozen chef stations where you can have food prepared to your order.  There is a separate dining area for adults and we saw many of the people we had played tennis with during the day.  The bakery offers numerous bread selections including white chocolate bread which is outstanding.

Tuesday morning after breakfast, we headed back to the tennis courts.  Intermediate lessons are offered at 9:15 and we both participated in that class.  I thought the intermediate class was pretty basic so I decided to take the advanced class tomorrow.  Afterward we played several sets with Bernie & Suzanne Hamel, a couple from Montreal.  We ate lunch at the Marketplace and then returned to the tennis courts for the afternoon tournament.  There were four courts active for the tournament which was up & down…winners moved up and losers moved down so we played many different couples.

Wednesday we followed a similar schedule, but Ying decided to take up golf so she enrolled in the beginner golf class which followed the intermediate tennis class.  I finally got our new travel website finished (www.ACCEXS.com) and was able to mail our Christmas cards which we had brought with us as we could not get them all written before we left home.  We ate dinner at The Grill, a more intimate restaurant, which we didn’t think was that much better than The Marketplace.

Our original plan was to stay at Sandpiper Bay for four nights, then take a two-night cruise on a Celebration ship to the Bahamas, and then head to Miami Beach for the last two nights.  However, Ying had sent her passport to the Australian Consulate in Washington DC to get an Australian visa and it has not yet been returned.  Without her passport, we cannot go to the Bahamas, so we decided we would stay here at Sandpiper Bay for an extra two nights.  But when I inquired about staying the extra two nights, I was told that they were sold out for the Christmas week which begins on Friday and they could not accommodate us for those two extra nights.  So we decided to drive down to Sunrise and stay near the Sawgrass Mills Mall where we can complete our Christmas shopping, and then go on to Miami Beach early Sunday morning.

Thursday I went to the advanced tennis class again in the morning while Ying took another golf lesson.  We ate lunch with Gary & Betty La Rue from Southern California who we had played tennis with a few times.  Gary had decided to take a lesson on the flying trapeze at 3:00PM so I went over to watch and take some pictures.  For a man with seventeen grandchildren, he did very well.  Ying went sailing Thursday afternoon in the lagoon, and then tried out the paddleboards.  We ate dinner again at The Marketplace.

Friday was our last day at Sandpiper Bay.  I left early and ate breakfast alone so I could go to the advanced tennis lesson at 8:00AM.  After the lesson we played Up & Down sets and my partner and I beat the nine other teams during the one hour of play so I will leave Sandpiper feeling very good about what I learned.  One of our opponents was Layton Register from Lexington, Kentucky who is in the short term rental business.  Ying slept late and then took her final golf lesson.  We checked out at noon, ate lunch and then drove south to Sunrise, Florida where we checked into a Doubletree Hilton in Sunrise, Florida.

Ying spent all day Saturday at the Sawgrass Mills Mall, one of the largest in the country.  I had a massage at a local Massage Envy and then joined her for dinner at the Grand Lux Café at the mall.  It took almost 30 minutes of driving around to find a parking space, then another 20 minutes to walk to the restaurant.  I have never seen so many people at a mall.  The luxury stores such as Coach had lines of 30-40 people outside the stores, waiting to get in.  After dinner we saw the movie Saving Mr. Banks.

Sunday we checked out of the Hilton Doubletree and drove to Miami Beach.  When I lived in Miami Beach I watched the billion-dollar remodeling of The Fontainebleau in 2003-2005 and had always wanted to stay there.  So we checked in to a beautiful room on the top floor overlooking South Beach.  I returned the car as we would not need it here and then spent the afternoon at the pool.  I walked down the boardwalk about twenty blocks and observed all kinds of reconstruction.  We ate dinner Sunday night at Hakkasan Chinese restaurant.

Monday Ying walked down to Lincoln Road and shopped most of the day.  I stayed at the pool until my skin started to burn and then return to our room to do some work.  We had originally planned to meet at Nexxt on Lincoln Road for dinner, but I decided not to walk all the way down there and so Ying ate alone and brought me some take-out.

On our final day, we stayed at The Fontainebleau as long as we could, then checked out and returned to Nexxt on Lincoln Road for a final lunch.  After lunch to took a cab to the airport and boarded our flight to LAX where we connected to a flight up to San Francisco.  We finally got home just before midnight on Christmas Eve.

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