Flying to Miami.

I took a very early morning flight on Friday to Miami to go to Rachel’s daughter’s wedding on Saturday night. I had a wonderful time – full of quirky experiences and nice memories. Rachel is a nurse coworker of mine. It was going to be a lavish celebration and Rachel worked so hard to make it happen for her daughter. We travelled with Rachel’s late husband’s brother Joon who had flown in from Korea for the occasion. He’d been in the states for about 4 days already.

It was a 7 am flight because Rachel needed to be in town on Friday morning at 11 to attend the wedding rehearsal. Rachel’s best friend Pat, who I had briefly met here in Maryland a few months ago, has family in Florida was driving in from her family’s house to meet us at the airport. We then proceeded to drop Rachel off at the rehearsal and as she flew from the car towards her anxiously waiting daughter/bride, she yelled at Pat and I – take care of Joon today for me! And Pat and I looked at each other and then looked at Joon and we laughed and settled in to the afternoon. Pat and I, not really friends to start off with, spent the next two days together roaming around Miami. We actually get along well as travel partners – the pace, the things we wanted to see, the places we wanted to eat, the amount of money we wanted to spend all lined up very nicely and we had a good time with each other. Joon, joined us on that Friday – to which I used Google translate a lot. Like a lot. I have no idea how well it worked, but Joon seemed to understand various things like – we are going to the beach and we need to buy Spanx for Rachel. Pat wanted to head to South Beach and we Ubered there after checking into the hotel and had mojitos and walked along the beach.

Here I am on the beach! The weather was perfect. I had the first of many cubano sandwiches. Everyone in Miami has a designer purse, beautiful breasts and tiny dogs which they move around in strollers. If I lived in Miami, I might have to purchase those things.

We walked down the main shopping strip in South Beach looking for the Spanx (which we did find) and Pat is a coffee fiend (she likes to plan the next cup as she is finishing the last cup) and as I have been trained by Jeremy to look for coffee while on vacation, I was happy to hunt for coffee with her. Also, one of the small pleasures on this vacation was interacting with handsome young men in various hotels/restaurants/bars which I never really get to do when I’m at home because while Jeremy is still very handsome – he is no longer young. Don’t worry, all the young men who smiled at me only did so because I reminded them of their mother.

I enjoyed introducing Joon to fresh coconut juice. He is a funny man (as far as I can tell, the google translate could only do so much).