Day 14 Fort Lauderdale

Saturday 20th January 2018

Fort Lauderdale lies in the south eastern part of Florida, the third largest state population in the US just behind California, 1st and Texas 2nd.  Fort Lauderdale is a maze of waterways, boatyards, and waterfront properties, many with their own jetty provided to park the owners very expensive watercraft.  Downtown is The Strip, a  promenade running along oceanside highway A1A lined with upscale outdoor restaurants, bars, boutiques and luxury hotels.  The port is the gateway to the Everglades National Park with it’s unique eco-system and array of wildlife.  Quite near to Fort Lauderdale is the colourful city of Miami notable for the fabulous art deco architecture.

Awoke this morning to find six other cruise ships in port, that’s Port Everglades, the port for Fort Lauderdale.  This makes for a very busy port, though apparently the port can handle many more ships than this and holds the record for cruise passenger numbers processed on a single day.

We had decided that we would take advantage of the shuttle bus to the Galleria Mall.  Some delay in getting there as the US government employees have shutdown due to a budget dispute, this includes port security.  The mall, mainly consisting of prestige brand shops, held little interest, not too bothered by the logo on our stuff, function much more important!  We had already found that just across the road was a Publix supermarket, a visit here was much more productive, allowing the purchase of some of those mundane essentials for keeping us going.  However the mall did have one great feature, a food court where we could enjoy a lunch from the oriental food counter, Bourbon Chicken and Sticky Orange Chicken with rice or noodles on offer, yummy!  There being not much else about took the shuttle back to the ship, enjoyed the journey each way which gave us quite a good tour of the rest of what Fort Lauderdale had on offer.

Sailaway 

This evenings sailaway was quite entertaining, each of the ships leaving the port with a great deal of fog horn blowing, music from all the sailaway parties plus extra horn blowing when passing the tower blocks at the port exit.  The residents, as each ship passed, replying with a cacophony of car horns, air horns, trumpets and calls and shouts with lights flashing on and off.  Must be great fun for those residents joining in and absolute hell for the rest, and pretty much every day of the year!!!