Fort Lauderdale Weekend

 We left the ship in Ft. Lauderdale on Saturday morning, expecting to wait to disembark and go through US Immigration at the port. We walked off the ship at 8:30, had no wait at all at Immigration, got a taxi within minutes and were picking our rental car up at the airport a little after 9:00. Now what were we going to do with at least 5 hours before we could go to the hotel?

We had planned to drive out to Sawgrass Mills Mall on Sunday anyway to do a little shopping for our next trip, so we rescheduled that and were at the mall shortly after it opened at 10. We made a beeline for Columbia Sportswear, which was the only place I wanted to go, and had made our purchases by 11:00. We wandered around for another hour and then decided to head back toward the hotel and have lunch at Duffy's Sports Bar before doing a little shopping at the local Publix. We didn't need to go out for breakfast, or dinner for that matter, every night we were there. A little bit of cheese, crackers and paté would do the trick.

Fortunately our room was ready when we arrived at the hotel, and we spent the afternoon sitting on our terrace overlooking the beach. We were still out there when the ships, all 6 of them, left Port Everglades on their next cruises. Lago Mar, our hotel resort, is not very far from the port entrance - we could walk down the beach to the breakwater in about 15 minutes - so the ships are quite close as they sail out. Serenity left just after 6 p.m. We watched her disappear, now looking forward to next year when we will be cruising on her in September and again in November.

On Sunday evening we went to Truluck's for dinner. This is a favourite restaurant that you will note we have also been visiting in downtown Miami on our recent cruises that left from that port. The Fort Lauderdale location moved since we were last there. Now it is on the A1A, also known as Ft. Lauderdale Beach Blvd, a little closer to our hotel than it was previously. It is a much larger space, and even busier than we remember. We had made an online reservation in the morning and were glad we did - we wouldn't have gotten a table otherwise. We had a lovely meal of all of our favourite dishes, especially the Florida Stone Crab Claws.

Tomato Salad

Wedge Salad

Stone Crab Claws -

- times two!

This is the 'small' key lime pie. We shared one
for dessert.

We spent a lot of time just sitting outside. The resort was quite busy and our little terrace was nice and quiet. 

I did a couple of watercolours of the beach 'en plein air', which is a new concept for me. Usually I'm lucky to get a good photo to sketch from later on. They came out so nice that Matthew has asked to put them up in his condo. They are now matted and framed for him.

It was a nice relaxing end to the trip, and now we're home again starting preparations for Christmas and our next trip in January. But there is still one more post to this blog - the Art Post. I attended most of the art classes where we did a lot of work with watercolour paint, and I also did some of my travel sketches so there's lots to show.