But first, we have a ton of studying to do and a few days in Florida before we embark on our journey…

We received our books (FOUR OF THEM) shortly after we registered for our class, and sometime in January, we started to panic that we were going to run out of time and we started reading and studying them. It was a fairly overwhelming amount of information, and we were a little bit scared of how it was going to go.

Finally, it was go time. We packed up our stuff, and then…

I was off today, which was nice. Twenty five loads of laundry while Matt worked later, it was time to go. We had dinner at Vesper (yay for their $12 burger and beer Sunday special), drove over to our friends’ house to drop off our cat, and grabbed an Uber to the airport. 

We got there with too much time for our 11:59 pm flight – PreCheck is AWESOME – and noticed a 10:59 flight that was boarding in 38 minutes. Matt asked, and by some miracle we were allowed on the earlier flight. 

Of course, it left kinda late because the cleaning crew took forever, but an uneventful flight later we landed eight minutes early. 

Then they couldn’t figure out how to drive the jetway to the plane, so we had to wait a while longer to be let off. Guess they had to reboot the thing or something. 

Finding our rental car was relatively painless also, and we got to my parents’ house by about 7:00 am. We quickly scarfed some breakfast and then laid down for a bit. 

Three hours later, we felt almost human again. We decided to grab Cuban sandwiches from Publix and head to the beach. 

Ahhhhh. Heaven at last. Singer Island never disappoints. SO nice to finally sit and chill and read a book laying out on the beach.  

After a few hours, we decided we needed to get to Guanabana’s, where the hurricanes flowed. Well, two of them. It’s still (and will likely forever be) my favorite bar on earth. 

We came back to the house for showers and dinner. Needless to say, we didn’t last too long after that before going to bed.

I slept almost 12 hours that night… Damn that felt good! 

We had some breakfast and hung around for awhile, then had some lunch… Then we headed to Juno to the beach this time, since we wanted to go up to Tequesta for happy hour/dinner and that’s already halfway there.

After a nice chill afternoon hanging out on the beach, we went over to Tiki 52, which is near Blue Point (another favorite). It was way livelier that Blue Point has been in a long time, and the deals were amazing – $2 Tuesday is a thing!  And their Ahi tuna nachos were to die for…

Then back home after grabbing a few pics of the pelicans hanging out on the marina, showers, and bed.

Not quite as much sleep that night… But still. Sleep is coming and it’s good.

We hung out by the pool most of the morning, then grabbed some leftover steak for salads for lunch, chilled out for a bit, and headed out to Palm Beach.

I freaking LOVE Palm Beach. It’s always reminded me of my childhood, of far off places that I was way too young to appreciate. Especially The Breakers, where we went to the Seafood Bar for drinks. 

The bar has fish swimming around in it. SO damned cool. And the pineapple infused martini I had was every bit as good as I remember it being years ago the last time I had it. We wandered around for a little bit longer, ogling at the beauty of the architecture of the hotel. It reminded us of a bunch of stuff we saw in Vegas, only it’s the real thing. There’s actual history that happened at this place. We took pics of half of the placards so we can look back…

Then home – dinner was croquetas and ropa vieja. YUM. As always, tiredness took over and we laid down pretty early. Matt has to work tomorrow, and I’m getting up to go watch the sunrise on the beach – one of my very favorite activities on the planet.

Wow. Sunrise was… well… The clouds got brighter, anyway. It’s still always cool to watch the dawn of day on the beach, but it sure wasn’t what I wanted to see. At least the time lapse came out cool because there were enough clouds moving across the sky…

I stopped by Tulipan’s on the way home for pastelitos and cafe con leche, and the rest of the day was pretty boring. I read books, I actually jumped in the pool for a few, which was nice, and showered. There was a load of laundry done somewhere in there, too. Lunch was roast pork, spaghetti, and carrots. An interesting combination, anyway. And delicious. Especially since I didn’t have to make it. 

At some point, I got all my crap together for tomorrow morning. If I wake up, I might go to the beach for sunrise again and see if it redeems itself. 

When Matt was off work we went for a walk then out to dinner at The Catch. Sushi. YUM. 

Then we went and had a beer at Coastal Karma. That put us home after 9:00 pm. Oy. So late. 

I woke up at the ass crack. Of course I did. I hit the button on the coffee maker, grabbed my stuff, and headed to the beach for sunrise after all. 

WORTH IT!  SO pretty today! And SO many people out! It’s gonna take an hour to get them all out of my time lapse. But whatever. I’m so glad I went. 

I spent the entire day pretty much hanging out by the pool reading a book. The family came over for dinner, so we got to hang out with them, which is always highly entertaining. I managed to stay up past 9:00 again, which was amazing!

Tomorrow, we leave for sailing school!!!

Catch the video here: