Florida - Fort Lauderdale

Surprise! We're away again, although without any exotic cruise destinations on the agenda; just a drive from Fort Lauderdale to Key West. And we must say it has been a bit strange so far to have flown to Florida and not anticipate boarding a ship. But, just to keep in the spirit of things, here's one of the ships we watched sail out, the Royal Princess:

Right now we're just hoping that the weather improves as we head further south. We arrived on Friday to a nice enough day, but very windy. Fortunately our beachfront balcony has given us good protection from the wind, otherwise it would have been impossible to sit outside. For these first thee days, we've been at the Lago Mar Resort, where we stayed with Monica's mother and Renate last year. We had a first-floor room with a walk-out patio last year and it was great - this year with the wind we're not sure it would have been used as much so we're just as happy to be a couple of floor up. Our balcony also offered better protection from the rain that we've been having off and on through the weekend.

And of course it was Thanksgiving weekend - that means lots of families getting together for the holiday. And in this case, also lots of kids. Not a real issue, but it made for a noisier Friday and Saturday afternoon and evening. Although we didn't get into the pool, we did manage a couple of walks along the beach. See the difference in the weather?

This is supposed to be a relaxing vacation, no all-day tours, no needing to be up at 6:00 for a 7:00 departure for anything (unlike our other trips this year) and so far we've managed to fill the time with visits to a couple of shopping malls - NO, not on Black Friday! We're not that crazy, although we seemed to have timed our visit to Sawgrass Mills perfectly on Saturday. We arrived while there were still parking spots in abundance, and we left just as it was starting to get busy with people having nothing else to do since it was raining again. So we can strike one or two more things off our Christmas shopping list.

For anyone who is following our Lifestyle Change blog at http://howwegothealthier.blogspot.ca, we're seeing how well we can keep up our Fitbit logs while we're away. For those not familiar with what we're doing, we're using our Fitbit trackers to log our steps and exercise, and the accompanying food log to cover calories consumed, trying to eat smarter and more carefully. Right!! It's hard enough doing that with the food we cook, never mind when eating your meals in restaurants every day. It is a bit of a challenge, but so far, so good. Monica's even got some ideas for recipes she's going to incorporate into the blog when we get home.

Salad of mixed greens with grilled pineapple, from
Aquario at the hotel

Surf & Turf at Trulucks's. Do you think they had a
run on broccoli? It was delicious, anyway.

On Sunday evening, we had dinner with Susan at Truluck's, a very nice seafood restaurant not too far away from the hotel and Susan's place. We had a great time and are hoping we can get together with her again when we're back from Key West.

Well, now it's Monday morning. Not particularly bright outside, but also without a breath of wind on the beach. Time to pack up and head down to Islamorada where we'll be spending the next two days. We should be there in the early afternoon, so expect some more interesting photos on the next post.