South Beach, Miami

Last weekend, Blake and I got to spend four days on one of my company's award trips. It wasn't but a couple of years ago we were back here with a completely different team. It was nice just to get a way, sleep in as much as we could, dine and actually have adult conversations and actually lounge at the beach and pool and not be watching kids every second. It is crazy to be able to say that I have read four of the five top New York Times Best Sellers of the year already!!

Since I like to be able to refer back to the places we ate and stayed, here it is. We stayed at the Ritz Carlton South Beach, great location, walking distance to everything. We loved how our room opened out to the pool on the first floor.

We ate at hotel the first night at a dinner reception and had some incredible seafood including the most divine crab claws and oysters. Blake played a great round of golf at The Miami Beach Golf Club and we had dinner at BLT Steak, a nice (but not stuffy) steak and seafood place off Ocean Drive in the Betsy Hotel. The Popover bread was heavenly (pictured above!) And yes... we were super patriotic nerds that rushed home after dinner to watch the opening ceremonies!

The highlight of our trip was Deep Sea Fishing on the Therapy 4 with Captain Stan. The most perfect fishing experience I could imagine. I had organized it for six of us and the boat was huge and spotless complete with a nice AC in doors.

Within 15 minutes of leaving the coast, we started catching 15 pound Bonita's. Not worth eating, but SO MUCH fun to catch. It started raining but none of us seemed to mind as all six of us had fish on the lines at the exact SAME time!

It was so nice not to have to go far out at all in order to fish! We had the Miami sky line in our background all day!

We probably caught 20 in less than 90 minutes time. Once our arms were burning from reeling them in, we decided to go find JAWS or his friends a sailfish or hammer head. We drug the bottom of the Atlantic for an hour against the Gulf Stream waiting for one of them to bite.

Since we had had such a crazy and busy first part of the fishing trip, we didn't mind when we didn't catch anything and had to head in. I can't say enough about our Therapy4.com experience and can't recommend them enough.

We loved spending the late afternoons at the beach doing the MOST INCREDIBLE people watching in the WORLD! It is amazing what a melting pot South Beach is for the world. SO MANY Europeans and people from Central and South America. It felt like we were in the minority, at times, speaking English yet it was all Spanish. The water is SO MUCH clearer than the gulf and Blake and I spent nearly an hour in chin deep water where we could actually see our toes. It was kinda nice.

After tons of lounging, napping and watching of the Olympics, we wrapped up our little relaxing vacation with our last breakfast at The Front Porch... a perfect spot on Ocean Drive with a yummy omelet menu.

Two of my teammates, Nina and Jenna.