Party in the city where the heat is on! Is Miami officially the party town of the United States? I think it just might be.
When my six girlfriends and I decided to do a quick weekend trip to get our Will Smith on, we turned to Airbnb for a cheap place to stay.
What we found was not only cost effective but also luxurious! We lucked out and found one of the owner suites at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach. Between the seven of us, it worked out to about $130 total per person for the whole weekend. It also included all of the amenities that come with being a hotel guest. And far below the hotel price at that! Score! It was one of the best Airbnbs I’ve stayed at.
The view alone was worth the price!
There are several hot tubs and pools at the hotel including a “day club” type pool for 21+ where the party happens.
Tip! Get to the pool area VERY early to reserve a chair. Each morning we were down there by about 9:30 a.m. and most of the chairs were already full. And one person can only reserve up to 3 (or maybe 4?) chairs so take a buddy to help reserve if you have a large group.
It’s also impossible to find towels yourself so you sort of have to depend on the pool guys to set up your chair for you which of course means you have to tip them. Annoying! The towels are in the white cabinets if you want to be a rebel and do it yourself 😉
There are two different restaurants by the pool area as well as waitresses walking around among the pool chairs. Be weary of the price though! One of my girlfriends had a sandwich, diet coke and one cocktail and her bill was $94. Be ready to splurge if you’re staying at the Fontainebleau!
While I wasn’t a huge fan of South Beach (my clubbing days are long behind me), the hotel itself is very beautiful. The beaches were fairly crowded and the sand wasn’t that white, white sand I love in the Caribbean. But you could walk for miles and the sun was shining (except for one rain storm!). And coming from cold Manhattan, that was enough for me! You can also rent paddle boards and jet skis as well as schedule banana boat rides.
We also loved the boardwalk between the hotel and the beach. You can walk down into South Beach as far as the eye can see. The Fontainebleau is a little far from some of the other major hotels in South Beach so it was a way we could walk to the others to see what was going on.
We ran into a man on the boardwalk who was selling coconuts! With a knife the size of a machete, he chopped the top right off and showed us how to drink the coconut milk. We had been talking about how we felt like we should be drinking our beach drinks out of a coconut so it was fate!
The restaurants at the Fontainebleau are extremely expensive. The first morning we popped into a cafe just off the hotel lobby and my iced coffee and fruit cup was $15! So be ready to spend A LOT of money at this hotel. Or walk about half a mile down the road to the CVS and buy food for the hotel room which is what we ended up doing!
We did splurge one night on dinner at Hakkasan, an Asian restaurant inside the resort. This is one of several Hakkasan restaurants around the world and of course it was delicious! But again – a splurge!!
I probably will never go back to Miami unless it’s with a local who can show me where to go and what to do outside of clubbing. But the Fontainebleau was a beautiful hotel that exuded class and luxury the entire time we were there. It was definitely a fun splurge trip for my group of seven girlfriends! In the words of Will Smith, it’s a place to party all night on the beach til the break of dawn.
