Spending my birthday in Miami (January 23rd through 27th)

January 23rd

Flying into Miami on January 23rd 2025 to unseasonably cold weather for the area seemed predictable as the whole point was to escape the cold of the north. This has been the goal for the past 3 years without much success. This was going to be the best shot of finding the warm, but then the Polar Vortex came along and pushed cold air to an area that rarely sees it. Luckily it warmed up a bit throughout the weekend and we eventually made it to the beach.

The fun part of note about the flight is though we booked our flights separately from Lansing and Pittsburgh. Both of our connecting flights came into Detroit and we flew together (but separate) to Miami. The “unfun” part was that my flight from Lansing to Detroit was delayed and I had to run from Terminal A to Terminal C. If it wasn’t for the flight from Detroit to Miami being delayed, I wouldn’t have made it. As it were, I made it with only a couple of minutes to spare. The good news was my bag that I checked made it as well.

We arrived at our hotel, the Palms Hotel & Spa https://www.thepalmshotel.com/. Because one can never rely on flights, no dinner reservations were made for the first day. So we just ate at the hotel restaurant (Picture above, we sat at the table dead center of the photo). And since it was cold, not to much walking around town. The hotel was super nice but probably wouldn’t stay there again. Nothing wrong with it, it was just a lot of money but probably get as much value with spending a little less.

After dinner we tried to find a after bar near by. Went to on called Gin + Collins and found it was just the hotel bar for the AC by Marriott hotel and was dead. It was after this that we went to the Lost Weekend https://sub-culture.org/locations/lost-weekend-miami/ bar and discovered that they still allow smoking in certain bars in Miami/Florida.

Because of the smoke we ended up going to Havana 1957. I actually really liked the place for some reason. https://www.havana1957.com/ There are multiple locations and I think we went to the one on 401 Espanola Way twice.

After getting a couple drinks, we figured we’d try one more place.

We stopped at Wilde on the Porch https://wildeontheporch.com/ for drinks before heading back to the hotel.

January 24th (Birthday Day)

Started the day with breakfast at the hotel. It was a little warmer today then the previous day. So we did some walking around. We stopped at Bar Luca https://www.barluca.com/ and had some drinks. It was still pretty cool and windy. So having drinks outside may have not been the best plan.

After some time at the back at the hotel, it was off to my birthday dinner at MILA!

The dinner reservation was at MILA https://mila-miami.com/ (Picture above)

A fantastic restaurant with a little floor show but this was overshadowed by everyone being pretty cold. Still feeling the effects of the Polar Vortex and as half the restaurant is outdoors, the restaurant was handing out cashmere blankets to keep the patrons warm. All and all, this was a pretty expensive meal but it was mostly due to the bottle of wine that we got (see below)

Afterwards, we did a little walking around. We initially went looking for a wine bar and saw a place on the map called “Bar Derriere” which we weren’t sure what that was going to end up actually being. But didn’t see that name on the window. It was actually called A la Folie Cafe’ https://alafoliecafe.com/ and it didn’t really have wine but had epic Crepes and pancakes late at night and was pretty much a late night desert joint. Really cool and really good!

Good place and good service too. After that we called it an early night back to the hotel.

January 25th

What is pretty normal for when we travel, if we are not doing breakfast at the hotel, we are hunting a good coffee place. This mornings stop was at Crema Gourmet https://www.cremagourmet.com/

From there went back to the hotel and got our first round of time around the pool

And a little bit of time at the beach

From there it was getting ready and heading out to our second night reservation, Jaya at The Setai. https://www.thesetaihotel.com/miami-beach-restaurants/jaya

And what a beautiful location. This was the first place I ever felt a little outclassed.

I had the lobster, it was awesome.

After a phenomenal meal, did the usual walking around. We wanted to score a nice Port so we hunted down a steakhouse. A bit of a secret that if you want to find ports, go to a steakhouse. The one that we went to was the STK Steakhouse https://stksteakhouse.com/venues/south-beach/. If I am every in Miami again, I am going here and getting red meat. This place smelled fantastic!

From there, we headed back to the hotel for the night.

January 26th

The final day full and again, Hunting for coffee. This day it was Be Bakery by El Almacen. https://www.instagram.com/bebakerymiami/

But then it was pretty much right to the beach to capitalize on the warm weather and the sunlight

When it started to get a little dark, we moved to the pool. Once done there we got ready and headed off to our third reservation at Chica https://chicarestaurant.com/chica-restaurant-miami

Going here on a Sunday night was fantastic as it was quiet and had the place pretty much to ourselves. As seen below, food again was amazing and quite frankly was the most inexpensive dinner of the weekend. But so much worth it.

After which we did a second turn at Havana 1957. After that, we went back to the hotel. But in route we stopped at a Rubber Duck shop, Duck World https://duck-world.com/ and then headed back to the hotel.

The next day was pretty much just getting up, Breakfast at the hotel and heading back to the great white north, eh.

Final Thoughts

I booked the hotel using one of my hotel membership sites. The hotel is great, don’t get me wrong. But probably would have been better to book something beach side a little farther south near where most of the places we went to was. Probably also could have saved a little coin as well.

This was my birthday and I have a tendency to go to a lot of high end places I don’t normally go to all at once. So this would be a more expensive trip than average. But, as always, I had the best time.