Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Florida continued!

dAy 3:

Monday we decided to tour around Ft. Lauderdale by way of the water taxi. Ft. Lauderdale is known as the "Venice of the America" because there are canals going through the City with seriously hundreds of docked yachts. It was fun to take the water taxi through the canals and see all the mansions and multi million dollar yachts.


The best thing about seeing these mansions was hearing the history behind the homes. We saw mansions that belonged to Wendy Thomas (Dave Thomas's daughter, yes the famous Wendy!), The Wells Family (Wells Fargo), Alamo rent a car founder, and the guy who invented the tags that go on clothes that beep if someone tries to steal them. Funny enough, the biggest house along with a 43 million dollar yacht parked in front belonged to the woman who decided to open a kiosk in every mall selling cheap sunglasses - yep, the founder of Sunglass Hut! It was really interesting to hear how these people made their money, and it does make you realize, there are so many ways to make money in this world, very inspiring!

This hotel is now the Hyatt Regency, but used to be owned by the man who started Phillips 66. He was broke as a joke and kept digging wells - 65 to become exact, but they all came up empty. He begged one last friend/investor for some money to dig one last well, and well, you guessed it, the 66th well was full of oil and he became an overnight billionaire. He became obsessed with the number 66. This hotel has 66 floors, the top roof has the 66 cafe, and there are 66 spikes that tilt at a 66 degree angle, etc. Very interesting.
Wow, those mannequins have awesome looking legs? Oh wait, I think those shorts look slightly familiar since I saw them nonstop for 8 days!


Waiting for the water taxi to pick us up and take us to the beach.


Here is my hottie walking home from the beach.


Monday night we had a fun night out and dinner on the water with Kristin's mission buddy. Just a cute little picture of the baby bump on our way out the door.



dAy 4:

Tuesday we decided to hit up the sites of Miami.

Yes, this was one interesting site we saw... j/k Dave!




We also took a sightseeing tour all around Miami. It was pretty informative, although very strange in terms of where they had us stop to take pictures.

Here are the Venetian Pools - again, not quite sure why this is super cool, but here is Kool n' the Gang striking our best Zoolander poses!



"ThRiLlEr, Thriller Night!" Oh yeah baby, this is where Michael Jackson filmed his Thriller music video!


In Old Havana, we stopped and walked around and there was this little park where tons of people come every day to play dominoes and chess. I thought it was so cute.


After the tour, we spent the afternoon on South Beach soaking up the sun. I know, isn't my wet chest so attractive?


South Beach (at least the section where we went) is located on Ocean Drive, probably the most famous street in Miami. This is the home of Gianna Versace, the head Versace designer who was murdered on his front steps back in 1997. Since then they have turned his home into a hotel where you can stay or eat dinner if you are super loaded. They said on the tour that this house is the 2nd most photographed home in the US, next to the White House. Whether or not that's true, I don't know? All I know is because they said that, we decided to take a picture there too!


And here we are attempting to do Leonardo DaVinci's "Virtruvian Man!" How did we do?





And that about sums up Florida day 3 and 4.

3 comments:

Jenny said...

Oh my gosh- those shorts are awesome! You guys look so cute.:)

Abi said...

Oh okay . .. are those shorts a joke? I am not getting it. Those are some short shorts Spence.
What a fun trip to go on. Vacations are really such a good thing for the soul and the couples soul. Thank goodness for parents to watch the kids.

Melissa said...

What a fun vacation! I am glad you got to do that before baby girl comes along. Um, I dont really like the short shorts. They are totally scary.