Ft. Lauderdale – We tour the canals with dinner by the beach



One of the many canals in Ft. Lauderdale

 Ft. Lauderdale is honeycombed with canals. They’re about the width of a city street and are lined with houses on either side, always with a boat dock. There must be miles of them. We hopped in our dinghy to explore several nearby. The houses right on the ICW are without exception mansions with a minimum price of about $1.5 million but these on a canal that connects to the ICW are not so grand but I would guess they are plenty expensive.

Now that's a good sized margarita

As a final for our stay in Ft. Lauderdale, we treated ourselves to a dinner on the boardwalk next to the beach. There are lots and lots of restaurants that line the avenue but we just took the first one we came to. They were offering two for one super-sized margaritas which were perfect for sitting and watching the sights – lots of college kids on spring break. As an aside, we noticed that we saw many makes of cars drive by with a concentration of muscle cars but in the 2 hours we were there, we didn’t see a single Buick! Looks like they’re losing the younger generation. We weren’t up to a full meal so we just ordered two appetizers which were plenty. We noticed that the street lights had shades that appeared to be removable. We found that they are there to shield light from the beach at night. This is the turtle egg-laying season and lights scare them off. I can't imagine turtles landing on Ft. Lauderdale beaches but they appear to be serious about it. I suppose they would rope off a section of the beach if a turtle appeared to lay eggs.







Turtle light shields!



We had stayed over in Ft. Lauderdale to get the bottom scrubbed and then wanted to avoid traveling the ICW on a weekend and, besides, we wanted to see more of Ft. Lauderdale anyway but now the time has come to continue our trek north. We’ll set out Monday morning for a marina near Joe Mastri. One problem is a bridge we have to encounter that only opens on the top of the hour. There are some repairs being made so they have dispensation to further restrict their opening schedule, ugh. We have to navigate through 16 bridges in all on Monday!! It’s only 30 miles but it’ll take all day.