WHERE WE STAYED IN MIAMI

As we had a 9 hour flight we wanted to book a hotel not far from the airport and near the beach for a couple of nights. While not always a guarantee of quality we thought a chain hotel would be fine for what we needed. Also, we were there at the end of Spring Break and thought that Miami Beach might be a bit noisy (and we knew we would want to sleep!) so we looked a little further up the coast from Miami Beach.

We ended up at the Best Western Oceanfront in Bal Harbor (maybe 4-5 miles north of Miami Beach on the same ‘barrier island’ off the mainland). It was probably 45 minutes from the airport but the Interstate was packed as we arrived at rush hour (maybe it should have been more like 25 minutes).

The hotel is a standard motel really but is right on the beach – we had paid a little extra for a sea view and it was well worth it – fantastic to look out the window straight onto the beach and sea.

There was a bedroom with 2 double beds which we all squeezed into and there was also a pull-out sofabed in the living room so you could potentially fit 6 in there (though it would be tight). It has a small kitchen and a huge supermarket was 100 yards down the road so we were able to cater for ourselves really easily.

The hotel also did a free breakfast that we had on a terrace overlooking the beach which was great. The swimming pool was really warm (too warm really) so the kids loved that.

Only criticism on the hotel was the AC was a little noisy – probably needed an engineer to look at it and in terms of location it is a little way out from Miami proper but that had some advantages too. All in all it was ideal for us – pleased with our choice. We booked it through Hotels.com.