November 22, 2017

   Fort Lauderdale is 24 miles north of Miami and is named after a series of forts built by the United States during the Florida War from 1835 to 1842, when the Seminole people resisted the attempts to relocate them to the “Indian Territory” which is present day Oklahoma.
  The commander of the detachment of soldiers who built the first fort was Major William Lauderdale.  There are ruins of three of the forts still visible.
  Besides being known as the Yachting Capital of the World, Fort Lauderdale is also known for its eating and drinking establishments.  There are more than 40,000 registered boat owners here which makes that a ratio of one boat for every seven residents. There are over 300 miles of navigable waterways. On the first weekend of November, Fort Lauderdale annually hosts the largest boat show on the water in the world.  This year on December 9th is the annual boat parade, even the clerk at Walgreens mentioned it to us today.
   The sky was clear this morning, not much of a wind with small fluffy white clouds along the horizon. The clouds became larger later in the day. The high was around 82 F. After a good sleep, we decided to walk the 2 miles to the Inter-coastal Waterways pier where the yellow Water Taxi docks at its stop #6.  We stopped at Lester’s Diner for a breakfast of coffee, eggs, sausages, home fried potatoes or tomato slices and toast or biscuits.  We were fueled up for the rest of the walk and a day of floating in three different water taxis seeing the waterside sights and more.  At the 17th Street drawbridge we walked to the crest of it and took a picture of Port Everglades cargo operations, but there was not a cruise ship in port today.  Our ship and another are scheduled for tomorrow.  We were lucky to see the drawbridge in operation for a sailboat with a tall mast.  Traffic lights on either side of the twenty meter wide lift section turned red, mechanical arms went down and the center of the bridge split with a section on each side rising to allow the sailboat to pass with mast rising tall of its deck.  The whole process took less than three minutes.  Then we walked back to the bottom of the bridge and found the #6 station for the water taxi nearby. We had logged 7,919 steps before boarding the water taxi.
   We only had to wait 20 minutes for the upbound (North) route taxi. We qualified for the 22% Seniors Discount. The first route along the Intercoastal Waterway took us past multimillion dollar homes.  One was a mere 32,000 square feet (owned by the person with the controlling shares of L’Oreal) while a smaller one was just 5,000 square feet, but only had one bedroom. More than half of the homes had a 70 foot or longer yacht moored beside them. The area is known as Millionaire’s Row. Many of the houses have large pools lining the water side of their properties. There were canals branching out on both sides lined with huge houses and yachts. One of the huge homes is known as the “White House”. The monthly property taxes are $41,000! It is two storeys high with a white piilared corner facing the Intercoastal Waterway and red brick covering about 70% of the rest of the building.  The property here is in such demand that people will buy a $3 to 10 million house, then tear it down to build their dream vacation home. There are still smaller (about 3,000 square feet) ranch style homes along the waterway. There is the large 180 acre Hugh Taylor Birch State Park which was donated in the early 1940s to the Florida by Hugh Taylor.  He had purchased over three miles of beachfront at the price of $1 an acre in the late 19th century and wished to preserve the natural state of the land for posterity.  The side along the Intercoastal Waterway is accessed by a dock and it can be driven to along 17th Street and North Atlantic Blvd.  The Atlantic Ocean side of the narrow barrier island has sandy public beaches. As we approached the Cortez Street bridge we saw two policemen on horseback crossing it.  As we left stop #9 we spotted two large iguanas sunbathing on the bridge’s supports.  They are not native to Florida, but are former pets that were no longer wanted, were set free and since have thrived.  We passed the Coral Ridge Yacht Club that is the second oldest yacht club in Fort Lauderdale.  Also along the way, we saw a floating fuel station for boats since some marinas do not have a fuel station. Some of the yachts cost millions of dollars.  The cost to maintain a yacht in good condition is about 10% of its value per year!  This includes a crew of 6 to 30 people depending on the size of the ship.  A captain is usually paid about $1,000 per foot of the length of a ship.  Some of the yachts were over 150 feet long!
   The Intercoastal Waterways are a series of connected canals, rivers and lakes running along the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico for more than 3,000 miles from Virginia to Texas.
   The second water taxi route was on the New River which runs parallel to the shopping street of Fort Lauderdale – Las Olas Blvd. The New River is connected to the Florida Everglades by several man-made canals. There were more expensive houses, although a bit smaller. There is a large home designed to fit into the Universal Studios Harry Potter theme park, by the same designer. It is valued at $28 million. Another house had a pagoda over part of a pool.  It was painted pale blue with a pattern of inlaid 18 karat gold. The second storey of the pagoda encloses a hot tub. We passed the oldest house in Fort Lauderdale on the New River which is right beside the newest building, a 45 storey apartment building.  The monthly rent for the lower floor apartments start at $2,500 for a two bedroom unit, $3,500 for a three bedroom and $4,500 for a four bedroom reaching $9,000 for the top floor. The two storey house was built in 1901 and has been converted to the Stranahan House Museum.
   We stayed on the boat until the last stop before it returned to the Intercoastal Waterway and got off to explore Las Olas Blvd. which is full of shops and restaurants.  It was nice to stretch our legs after three hours on the boat.  We walked to the street near the railway drawbridge, which we had passed under earlier on the water taxi, and then walked back along the Riverwalk following the New River back to the water taxi stop in about 40 minutes. As we waited for the water taxi we watched another sightseeing boat which looks like an old stern paddle wheeler, and is named the River Queen. We had logged 11,981 steps before boarding the next water taxi to go back to stop #6 to catch the final tour to Hollywood which had one of the stops at Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort. We passed the Port Everglades port where container ships were being loaded.  The Panamax container ships can fit 16 containers across its width and can fit in the original Panama Canal. Now newer ships are wider to use the wider capacity of the third canal of the Panama Canal which opened in 2016 and can hold 21 containers within its width. The port authority employs over 13,000 people.  The crane operators loading the container ships have salaries starting at $80 per hour.  There are 12 big cranes in the port for container ships and one container can be loaded onto a ship in less than 45 seconds. Ninety minutes later we were back to top #6.
  We retraced the same route that we walked this morning, noting that there was a rain shower visible just southwest of the airport, but the sun shone or was partially hidden by clouds all the way back to the hotel.  We stopped to buy some wine to take on the ship, which allows one bottle of wine per person to be brought on board at embarkation.
  We chose the 84 Thai restaurant for dinner which had delicious stir-frys.  It was a small restaurant in the strip mall across the street from the hotel.  We stopped at the Wendys for Frostys before shopping for muffins and a fruit salad for breakfast in the Winn-Dixie grocery store not being sure what restaurants would be open tomorrow morning which is American Thanksgiving Day.  We stored the fruit salad in the fridge in the room.  At 9 pm the temperature was 75 F.

Final steps for the day 21,019


Comments to this blogspot post are welcomed.
























Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

December 10, 2017

Image
   The sun was shining in a blue sky, there was a little wind and the temperature was 12 C, as we ventured to find the parada (bus stop) for local bus 605 to take us to Viña del Mar.   Within ten minutes we found it on Av. Playa Ancha.   The bus trip took about 20 minutes – being Sunday there was very little traffic.   We got to see lots of different areas of Valparaiso as the road followed the harbor shore. As we entered Viña del Mar, we saw the Floral Clock, known as Reloj de Flores, and pushed the button to signal to stop at the next parada.    We had 90 minutes to explore before returning to the floral clock. We walked along Av. Marina past the modern ocean side Sheraton Miramar hotel, Castillo Wulff almost on the beach and above on the cliff, Castillo Brunet, constructed of gray stone from Portugal.   Castillo Wulff was constructed between 1905 and 1908 and in 1995 became a National Historical Monument.   We walked across the bridge...
Read more

November 25, 2017

Image
       This morning we arrived at George Town, Grand Cayman.   Grand Cayman is the largest of the Cayman Islands, which are governed by United Kingdom.   The smaller islands are called Cayman Brac and Little Cayman.   Cuba is the closest country to the Cayman Islands at only 149 miles north and Jamaica is little further at 167 miles to the southeast. The Cayman Islands were discovered by Christopher Columbus on his third or fourth voyage to the Americas in 1503.   The sky was mainly cloudy, temperature 78 F and a light breeze.   The exchange rate here is one Canadian dollar is worth about 65.4 cents in Cayman dollars or if you wanted to by a t-shirt priced at $10 Cayman Dollars, to declare it for Canadian Customs the cost to show would be about $15.42 in Canadian currency.    The Cayman Port is celebrating its 40 th anniversary this year. There was one other cruise ship anchored near us the Aida Luna....
Read more

November 29, 2017

Image
    We crossed the equator during the night, after we cruised along the coast of Columbia to along the coast of the Republic of Ecuador.    This morning there was a haze and thin clouds, but the temperature was about 75 F and very little wind.   We could see beautiful beaches from the ship’s decks.     Manta, located in Manabi province, is one of the Republic of Ecuador’s largest ports and is famous for its tuna fishing industry. International major brands of tuna are processed here in one of the 16 facilities. The dock was within the working port and there were fishing boats unloading their catches at the next pier. There are 160 fishing boats on the tuna fleet. There was no smell of fish even though the ship was docked between five fishing boats that were unloading their frozen catches.   About 40 cruise ships dock in Manta each year.    Ecuador has some tall mountains in the Andes, some over 6,000 meters high. The tallest...
Read more