Violet Sky

Miami is not a cheap city. Miami-Dade is not a cheap county. Florida is, increasingly, not a cheap state, if the many headlines about areas with the fastest-growing real estate prices are any indication. So we went on this vacation looking to cut costs where we could, while still being able to enjoy what we intended to enjoy about the city.

Lodging

In addition to the normal level of spendiness in the Miami area, going there after Christmas and right before New Year’s Eve is not a recipe for cheap lodging. After reviewing the hotels in the area (extremely expensive!), I bookmarked several Airbnbs that looked promising. By the time I came back a week later, almost all of them were already booked, so I rushed to pick from what was left. The place we ended up booking was … fine. I saw the many complaints about the couch, and the host’s defensiveness about the feedback, and let me tell you – that couch was awful. But if you shifted your view from “I am renting a small home” to “this is a hotel room that happens to have a bad sitting area,” it wasn’t too bad.

Food

Obviously, the bulk of our food spending ended up at restaurants. We had several very delicious, but also rather expensive, single meals at Ghee, Edan, and Fiola, and the rest of the restaurant spending was smaller locations like Pollo Tropical. The food was one of the highlights of this trip, so it was well-worth the money.

Transportation

I’ve had the Alaska Airlines Visa card for a couple of years now, which gives me a yearly companion fare pass for $99 plus tax on a second ticket for a flight. We used that to keep this flight cheap, and used my status with Alaska to assign ourselves to premium economy for free. I don’t need first, but I sure do love some leg room!

We took a cab to the airport (Radio Cab Portland has an app just like Uber or Lyft, which allows you to pre-schedule pickups) and got picked up by our daughter on the way back – her first time picking someone up from the airport! Once we got to Miami, we picked up our little Nissan Juke, which we had booked using Costco’s travel portal. I wouldn’t say that I loved the car, but it was extremely efficient with gas – we paid more in parking than we did to refill the car at the end of the trip.

Entertainment

Since we were here to socialize, soak up the sun, and try to eat good food, we didn’t spend very much on entertainment. The airboat ride is $60 per person, so we paid for our group of four and got reimbursed for half by the other group. Vizcaya was a little pricey for what it was, but still a worthwhile way to whittle away some hours before our flight.

Shopping

Honestly, nothing interesting to report here. Supply runs to CVS and Target (my husband was sick for the second half of the trip, plus some random things we forgot) made up the bulk of our purchases. I think the most exciting thing we bought was two vintage Serie A team scarfs, for $42.80, from a used scarf store in Wynwood during our wander around.

Summary

Almost $4,000 for five days tied an expensive bow on our year of travel, but I’m not sad about it at all. Our first trip to Miami was fun, but we could not find very much food that we enjoyed, so having multiple excellent meals was great on the return trip, even if it cost us a little more than we would have spent otherwise. Being able to visit my friend again was also an enormous plus, and is likely to bring us back to Miami in the near future.