Today we started our cruise vacation!  We flew out early to Miami and what a nice feeling when we got there!  It was a little rainy, but cleared up shortly thereafter.  Last week, it was in the 30’s there (totally abnormal for the area).  Today… It was in the 70’s and warm!  We were so excited to be out of the snow and cold!

We took a cab to the hotel and got checked in.  We got a killer deal on a room in the downtown Miami Hilton through Priceline so we were able to stay almost within walking distance of the port.  We were very hungry, so we went out exploring to find some food.

They have a great free transit rail system to take people places all around downtown to places they need to go.  We found out, however, that free also means lots of homeless people and others begging for money from tourists after it gets dusk.  It made us very nervous, but we made it through.

We found our way down to a popular tourist place called Bayside Marketplace and ate dinner at Bubba Gump’s Shrimp Company.  The food was great!  I had Mahi Mahi and shrimp, and Angela had a Mahi Mahi sandwich.  The place is pretty famous and is all around the movie “Forrest Gump.”  They have a lot of memorabilia from the movie.  Even at the tables, they have license plates (below) that if you want your waiter to keep serving you, you turn the plate to Run Forrest Run, and if you are done, you turn the plate to Stop Forrest Stop!  🙂

After getting full of fish, we walked around the market for awhile and looked at everything.  There was a lot of Caribbean music playing and it was funny to watch the VERY old people dancing in front of a stage sweating up a storm.  We thought that some of them might actually have a heart attack!

We bought a churro and some ice cream cones for dessert and then headed back to the hotel for a good night’s sleep before getting on the ship tomorrow!  We are SO excited!