All right, let's get out of the airport and on to Miami! Coming from New Jersey - and being January - it was pretty great to go out to my rental car and feel temperatures near 80 degrees. I hadn't even been there fifteen minutes and I was thinking about how I could get used to this type of weather in January!
My hotel reservation was at the Sixty80 Design Hotel in Miami Beach, so I had about a 10 mile drive from the airport to get there. Having never been here before, I didn't realize prior to my visit that Miami and Miami Beach are technically two different cities. It's funny, as a basketball fan, I can remember LeBron James announcing in 2010 at his "Decision" that he was "taking his talents to South Beach," but this is a misconception, because South Beach is in Miami Beach, and the Miami Heat play at the American Airlines Arena in Downtown Miami.
At any rate, the highway took me through Miami first, and then I crossed over to Miami Beach via the Julia Tuttle Causeway. Sixty80 is named as such because its street address is 6080 Collins Avenue, which is considered "Mid Beach" compared to the better-known "South Beach."
My room at Sixty80 was listed as an "ocean view," and I guess you could say that was accurate, since I did see a sliver of the ocean between two other hotels across the street! I had a small terrace, so I was able to step outside and smell the ocean air, which was great. Access to the beach was very convenient from the hotel, as I simply had to cross the street and take a path between those hotels to the beach ... it was only a few hundred yards away, so I thought that was great. I was also happy with my choice to stay in Mid Beach rather than South Beach, as it was both less expensive and also less crowded. It turned out to be a great "home base" for the adventures I was about to experience in both Miami Beach and Miami.
