Why Fort Lauderdale is Famous

March 11, 2023

Today is Turnaround Day. Most of the passengers will be disembarking. A few hundred are staying on, including us. Replacements for those who disembarked will be boarding soon. Replacements and then some. It’s Spring Break here in Florida.

We decided to do a 5 km volkswalk since we had several hours in Fort Lauderdale. We have done the first half of the 10km walk (mostly along Las Olas Boulevard) a few times, so we decided we do the second half, which includes the beach. 

We took a taxi to the point where the second half starts. We found out there was a huge St. Patrick’s Day footrace in progress, and some of the streets were blocked off. We ended up getting dropped off 17 blocks from where we wanted to start. The footrace should have added at most two block to our walk. The cab driver just didn’t want to be bothered so he said we were one block from our destination, and I think he ripped us off, too. As a result, we had to walk an extra 17 blocks to get to the start of our route. We passed many of the race finishers enjoying brunch at sidewalk eateries or just trying to get back to wherever.

  

In the 1920’s, a series of artificial islands and inland waterways were created in Fort Lauderdale by dredging the area between a barrier island and the mainland.

The barrier island became Fort Lauderdale Beach, and the artificial islands became the ultra-expensive waterfront property that we walked past today. There are yachts everywhere.

We walked over a drawbridge - I think this was the Intracoastal Waterway - but we had to wait for some boats to go by first

Lots of yachts in the background, plus a few sailboats in the foreground

This type of development would not be permitted today. It was very hard for me to find anything on the internet addressing the dredging that was done here and the environmental harm it may have caused. Are we surprised?

The coral in this column (or whatever it is) was probably dredged up when this area was originally developed

A sign of the times: “Trimming mangroves is illegal”

We crossed the iconic A1A to get to the beach

When we reached the beach, we turned right and followed a beautiful walkway south to its end. What a delight! The beach is beautiful, clean, and wide. There are lifeguards, and picnic tables, and volleyball nets. It’s a postcard beach, and it goes on for miles.

Those clouds don’t even look real, but they are

At the point where we were supposed to turn around and return to our starting point, we had already walked 5km. We were thinking about finding a taxi and going back to the ship, but we realized we weren’t “too far” from the ship, so we decided to walk back to the ship.

By this time, I will admit, I was hot and tired, but it really didn’t look far on the map. So we decided to walk. We followed a busy street and we were committed — there would not have been any place for a taxi to stop and pick us up. It wasn’t as easy as it looked. We had a steep climb up another drawbridge.

Approaching the drawbridge

Sky Princess from the drawbridge. Still a long way to to go.

We finally arrived at the ship after having walked about 12 km. Most of the new passengers were onboard. Soon it was 3:30 pm and time for Sailaway.

This is the second drawbridge we walked across. The yellow boat is a water taxi/sightseeing boat.

As we leave Port Everglades, we sail past some amazing houses on the fabulous Fort Lauderdale beachfront

We returned to Sabatini’s for another delicious Italian dinner.

Spaghetti carbonara

Rock Opera was on the program for tonight, but it was cancelled again. We tried to find out what would be substituted. All we could learn from Guest Services was “a singer.” We decided to pass. We later learned that “a singer” was the lead singer from Rock Opera, and that his show was really good. Sometimes the onboard communication is not the best.

In case you are wondering, the normal schedule is to perform Rock Opera on the last day of one cruise and then on the first day of the next cruise, and so on. The set takes almost a full day to set up, so it saves a lot of putting up and taking down when it is scheduled this way.

Today’s color is Warm Sand for the absolutely gorgeous beaches that made Fort Lauderdale famous.