Day 70 – Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Yippee – Fort Lauderdale! This morning we disembarked the ship at approximately 10:30 am and walked to the nearest waterbus stop about a kilometre away. We bought ourselves a day pass and jumped on the next boat-bus (they literally look like floating buses) which took us to the beach. As we were going along, we were entertained with an amusing commentary by a gentleman who looked as though he had just got off a truck from somewhere deep in West Texas. He pointed out some of the more notable ultra expensive properties that we passed, as well as some of the stupidly expensive super yachts, and generally regaled us with tales of the utterly obscene amounts of money that some people spend on real estate and boats in this part of the world. For instance, some idiot just paid $78 million for a property which is only 7 years old, only to immediately obtain permission to knock it down and build a bigger one. 😒

After disembarking the boat, on the way to the beach, we walked past the Fort Lauderdale International Aquatic Training Centre, which is where Olympic athletes from around the globe come to train. There are only four such centres in the world. As we were passing, we saw various people practising high diving, some from a height of 65 feet. This was an unexpected but impressive and eye watering spectacle. (See pic below – spot the chap about to dive).

We then stopped at a beachside café and bar for a sit down and a drink and we ended up having some lunch there. After this we walked back to the water bus and proceeded to Hugh Taylor Birch State Park where we spent a very pleasant hour or two walking around the nature trails and generally enjoying the sunshine. We didn’t spot much wildlife but we did see a tortoise, a couple of lizards and Paul is certain he saw a raccoon, which is very possible because they do live in the park. We then went across the road to the beach where Bridge had a dip and we chilled out for a while. After this we headed (again on the water bus) to Las Olas Boulevard which is the main shopping street in Fort Lauderdale, where apparently all the cool people and fashionable shops are. Having failed to find anything affordable (or sensible) to buy, we sat down for dinner at a place called the Cheesecake Factory, which turned out to be a thoroughly pleasant experience. Finally, as time was getting on, we called an Uber to get us back to the ship, where we were the second to last people to reboard at 8.10 pm. All in all, a really fun day. You’ve got to hand it to the Americans, they know how to do hospitality.