Ya’all know how we love our Miami Heat! Our excitement builds as preseason approaches. We felt like we hit the lotto when the preseason schedule was released and Miami had one of their five home games on a Friday night! Game on! Tickets were bought and now we cross our fingers for a win! Nelson has family in Miami so that is where we stay when we are in town. We were on a bit of a time crunch, as Bella gets out of school at 2:45 and we had to get to Miami through lovely 5:00 Friday traffic and get our dogs dropped off at Abuela’s and then high tail it to the Arena. Well the stars were aligned and we actually got their before the doors even opened! First good sign!
Walking in to the American Airlines Arena for the first time in 5 months, I felt the same excitement that I would feel if I scratched off a winning lottery ticket! The bright lights, the sound of the ball hitting the hard wood court, the bustle of the people and the smells from the food stations! Boy did it feel good to be back in the Heat’s House!
We settled in with our food and drinks and cheered our hearts out! It’s even better to be back watching our Heat when they have a winning game! They played the Houston Rockets so we were unsure of how well we would do. They did incredible though and we had a blast!
We continued with the Miami Heat theme on Saturday. One of our favorite players, Bam Adebayo, was do a signing at the new Miami Heat Store at the Pembroke Lakes Mall. A mall and Bam, what’s not to love!!
We got to the signing over an hour early and a line had already formed. There were 3 choices of items to buy that Bam would sign. But he would only be there for 1 hour. If you purchased his jersey, then you got to go to the front of the line. So that was a no brainer! The signing was very well organized. We were about the sixth family to meet him and he was just as kind as I was hoping! Wow, is he tall!
I spent some time googling anything eye catching going on this particular weekend and I came across Luminosa. It’s held at Jungle Island. Now the tickets to this evening event were rather pricey but I had never been so I wasn’t sure what to expect. But we threw caution to the wind and purchased 4 tickets online, Abuela came along with us. The total with the online discount for the 4 tickets was $148.32. That makes the tickets about $37 each. And parking was another $20.00. The parking was extremely close to the entrance so it was well worth the money in my opinion.
We arrived to an expansive lawn area with lots of seating options and areas to hang out. This was also the first of many bars that we encountered during the evening. Now my philosophy at events is to order a double for my adult beverage. It saves time on refills and it usually turns out a bit cheaper. For example, at the Heat games, I always order a double and it is $18. You can imagine my shock when my double at Luminosa was $26!!! I will say that it was a refreshingly, well-made Mojito but still!
Beverage in hand and many pictures already taken, we head through the entrance area. We were all amazed by just how beautiful this was! Words can’t explain how stunning the bright colors and intricate art work was. It was a spectacular display of hand painted lanterns that dazzled in the night. Just when we thought the next display couldn’t be more beautiful than the last, we were wrong… every time!
It was set up in a way where you could view everything but not be in the middle of a crowd. There were lots of areas to sit down and relax. Which was greatly appreciated! There were also games set up throughout to play if you wanted. We saw groups of families playing Jenga.
We sat down for a bit and had dinner. There was a mini food court type area with a variety of choices. You order from the restaurant or restaurants of you want and then you are given a number and a server brings you your food. Our table enjoyed pizza, fries, a loaded hot dog and a few bottles of water and the total was just over $50. While we ate, we were entertained with a live DJ and jugglers.
We ended up spending about 2 ½ hours at Luminosa. Each of us were blown away with the beauty of Luminosa and found our time there to be a delight! You can tell we were slightly obsessed with the beauty of all of it by the number of pictures! It was even more breath taking in person!
On Sunday, we went for brunch at Sergio’s. Unfortunately, we were not wowed! Service was not great and some of the food was served cold. It was an okay meal, nothing more, nothing less. I was disappointed because I live for Cuban food when we are in Miami! And Sergio’s did not deliver. A quick stop at Starbucks for some caffeine for the drive home and we were off!
