As part of a 9 day trip the week before Fantasy Fest, beginning in Ft. Lauderdale and ending in Key West, my wife and I stayed in Miami for three nights at the Hotel Faena. This was our first trip to South Florida. We loved the hotel and would stay again. We had a fifth floor room with a large balcony overlooking the pool, right above the level of the palm trees. The balcony was completely private and was difficult to see into from the ground - so we wore thongs and were nude out there. The hotel is truly beautiful and lives up to the hype that occurred when it opened. We had dinner at Los Fuegos in the hotel one night, which was good but the tables are very wide to accommodate grilling at the table. This made it difficult for my wife to hear me and we like being closer together. We had entrees from the kitchen rather than table grilled meats. Our rib eye steak was delicious.
Anyway, this post is about Haulover Beach so on with it. We visited on the way down from Ft. Lauderdale on Sunday afternoon about 2pm. The parking lot was nearly full but we lucked out and got a nice spot. Since this was a quick visit and we didn't have any beach towels, we walked to the beach with nothing more than our little bathing suits, tops, water and my wife's purse. We hadn't had lunch yet so after getting naked we made a beeline for the food truck and ordered a burger and ceviche tacos. We there at the truck in a bit of shade from an unused vending trailer. We proceeded to walk to the water line and get a feel for the beach and crowd. We noticed right away that the crowd was more diverse in every respect and more crowded than any other nude beach we've been to, including Orient Beach (pre and post Irma), Little Beach in Maui and Aquinnah Beach in Martha's Vineyard. We laid in the sand by the water and walked the entire nude section of the beach. The beach overall was a little smaller than I had imagined, but was plenty large enough.
The next day we had a very nice breakfast at the Wolson Cafe in Sunny Isles, just north of Haulover. My wife shopped for beach and pool wear at one of the two stores next door. Monday was Columbus Day, so the crowd was only slightly less crowded than Sunday. We bought towels on the way to breakfast so we had a much more comfortable visit. Sometime during the visit my wife told me this was her favorite nude beach, which made me happy that she was so comfortable among so many people. She said that the diversity of people was the main reason along with the general vibe of the beach. We again ate at the food truck but I don't recall what. We also brought two large insulated mugs of my wife's famous martini, which we filled with ice at the cafe.
Tuesday we had another great breakfast at a Colombian restaurant, El Tablazo in north Miami Beach. The beach was much less crowded and quieter this day. We arrived with our martini's, for which we had to buy a 4lb bag of ice and leave most of it on the sidewalk. We decided to walk to the pier that was far off to the north because it looked like there were umbrellas on it which might indicate a restaurant. As we left the nude section, I put on a speedo-style suit and my wife put on her bikini. We arrived at the pier and climbed the stairs to the entrance of the Beach Bar restaurant. Fortunately there was a balcony deck running the length of the building out to an outdoor deck dining area, so we didn't have to go into the indoor portion of the restaurant in our skimpy attire (I'm not sure they would let us in without shoes too). We had a couple of drinks and we shared a $40 lobster taco that was wonderful, plus another entree that I don't recall. After walking back to our towels and some more time on the beach we said our goodbye's to Haulover Beach.
Our next visit to Miami will have to be longer, so we can see more of the city and still have enough time on my wife's favorite nude beach.
