Winter Break 2023. Day 3. No one Can Sign.
Friday night was rough. Madeleine got up a few times and woke up Hallie a few times. Hallie woke up for the day at 7:02am. Madeleine got up a little after 8. Oy.
We went down to breakfast a little after 9. When we walked in the hostess came over the girls with a basket of toys and sunglasses. First Madeleine picked a little stuffed zebra and Hallie picked out sunglasses. Then Madeleine was upset that Hallie got sunglasses so the hostess let her pick sunglasses too. Then obviously Hallie was upset that Madeleine got two things and she got one, so she got to pick a stuffed giraffe. Anyway, good buffet.
We went to the pool and basically got the same seats we got last year at this grassy area next to the pool. I actually like it better than the area right at the pool because its less crowded and the kids can’t fall into the pool. We swam for a while and spent some time at the beach playing in the sand. Eventually my parents came down and Sherry showed up too. Sherry told us that she had been standing in front of the hotel trying to decide whether to walk to visit the building where her grandparents used to live, when a man came up to her and asked her where she was going. She said, “I’m not really sure” and he asked her to have coffee with him at Aroma. Turns out he was Israeli, gay, in his 40s, and knew a lot of the same LA Chabad rabbis that Sherry knows. Alright then.
We spent the whole day at the pool. It was basically all Jews. An entire hotel and no one could sign a check (literally, multiple times we heard people telling waiters they couldn’t sign checks).
For lunch I got a tuna sandwich and Tzvi had the mahi mahi sandwich. We also cocktails, but Hallie spilled Tzvi’s cocktail into Madeleine’s food, so we had to take her spaghetti to the bathroom to wash it off. It was pretty gross, but she still ate it. Hallie wasn’t too bothered by it all and just said it was an accident, which is when Tzvi tried to teach Hallie the concept of negligence, and how even though something is an accident it can still be your fault if you aren’t exercising proper care, to which Hallie replied “well you weren’t being careful because you shouldn’t have put your drink there.” Lawyered. I think Hallie also spilled Tzvi’s drink here last year.
After lunch I walked Madeleine to nap and it took forever. I must have walked over a half hour. At one point I passed another mom who was also trying to get her kid to sleep and she was like “trying to get a nap?” and I said “unsuccessfully” and she said “this is torture” and I agreed. Eventually I gave up and went back to the seats and Madeleine said she wanted to keep walking, so I told her she had to lay down and then she fell asleep in 2 minutes. Weird.
There was a pizza making class at 3:30 that Hallie took. She got to play with dough, sauce, and cheese which she enjoyed. Then they took it away to bake it. Very Shabbosdik. It was delicious. Then the girls wanted to swim again, so they did, and Tzvi went with them, reluctantly. Madeleine went into the hot tub for the first time which was cute.
Eventually we went back upstairs to pack, bathe the girls, and get ready for the evening. Inbar was watching them tonight and we were going out with my parents and Tzvi’s mom.
We walked down Lincoln Road, which is a five or six block long outdoor pedestrian mall. My mom bought a few things and eventually we made our way to the end and our dinner at Chotto Matte.
The restaurant turned out to be a little more clubby then we were expecting, but I guess that’s Miami. I think they sat us in the bar seating (Tzvi and I were on a sofa) even though we had made the reservation weeks in advance, but that was okay because it was actually quieter than the rest of the restaurant. It was kind of ironic though, because no one at our table wanted to drink. Tzvi realized during the meal that he had spent the entire day outside, had a cocktail (well, half thanks to Hallie) and not drank any water, so he was dehydrated and opted to have a NA cocktail, which had some kind of pepper in it and was actually pretty good. At the table next to us was a man who looked like he was in his 50s, sitting with three women much younger than him. We tried to figure out what the story was. My mother thought he was engaged to the one next to him and the other two were here friends. Tzvi thought he hired all three of them for the night.
The food was nikkei cuisine (Japanese-Peruvian fusion), which isn’t just a food trend, but comes from Peru where there is a community of 90,000 Japanese people. It was small plates and we shared a bunch of things – grilled edamame and cauliflower wings. We also ordered a few spicy tuna rolls that the other shared. For my main I had a piece of salmon that cost $30 and was the size of two of my fingers. For dessert we had a passionfruit crème brulle, warm fudge cake and a melting chocolate cake, which were all pretty good.
After dinner we walked back to the hotel and went to bed.
Good day. Tomorrow we get on the ship!