December 26 – Fort Lauderdale

morning view from our room

Weather – 24º, glorious. The clouds we woke up to burned off by 10, but we had to dodge a few torrential downpours

Our ride - the yellow one unfortunately

Steps – 11,220

HAPPY BOXING DAY!!!

We seem to have no trouble sleeping late on vacation. Despite having gone to bed before 10:30, I woke up around 8:30 – 6:30 Calgary time, but I’m not IN Calgary.

drawbridge up

I woke up earlier to the sound of a Boxing Day disco outside our room…what on earth!?! Turns out, that the pool that is right outside our door can disturb my early morning snooze. I’m not sure why there was loud music at 6:30, but it
didn’t last. By about 8:00 there were normal pool sounds…kids shrieking, bottles rattling, but there was a DOOR to the pool, as long as it was closed, it was fine. I was a tad worried that being this close to the pool would be a problem, but it really wasn’t. In fact, our happy hour pool prosecco was quite convenient.

our evening ride

Today was our WATER TAXI DAY. Fort Lauderdale has water taxis through its canal system for sight seeing and transportation. We found the closest pick-up spot to our hotel was about 15 minutes walk away - turns out that there was a whistle stop closer to our hotel, but that wasn’t on any map, we only found out on
board. The taxi stops could be better signed. We struggled a bit to find where the stop actually was, I was glad everything was in English – non English speakers would have had a hard time.

We travelled upriver seeing massive homes, enormous yachts, a city park, and a few lizards all while listening to the commentary from one of the 3 workers on board. This boat we were on held about 40 people.

another sight seeing boat

We got off the taxi at an area with bars and restaurants where we had lunch at Bokampers – a huge sports bar kind of place with a terrific covered outdoor area along the canal. We ate, drank, and watched canal traffic.

Bokampers is next to a bridge over the canal. Some of the canal bridges
separate (drawbridges?) and go up to let canal traffic pass under, this happens at 15 and 45 minutes past the hour. I’m sure there’s more to it, but that’s all I learned.

wildlife!!

After lunch we wandered a bit and planned to take the water taxi back to our hotel. We waited about 30 minutes and just before the taxi came so did the downpour! We tried to shelter under a tree, but we found out that isn’t the best way to stay dry. The taxi came, but only to tell us it was FULL!

Fort Lauderdale by night

If it wasn’t pouring, we’d have walked, it was about an hour back. However…we tried for an Uber, the driver who was supposed to pick us up never found us and eventually cancelled…ugh! We were out of the rain on the porch of a restaurant, so we weren’t getting soaked, but uhg! We finally got David, the teacher turned
wedding photographer/Uber driver to pick us up in his Tesla. Although the distance wasn’t far (about 5km) the drive took about 20 minutes. This was ok,
we didn’t have anywhere to be, and David was lovely to chat with.

Fort Lauderdale by night

We then found another friend at our hotel pool bar where we came to spend our $30 daily credit on a couple of drinks. We didn’t catch the name of the young guy we chatted with at the bar, but he could give lessons in social skills – charming, asked about us, and gave bits of information about him (minus his name, maybe he was a spy.)

dinner

Our evening entertainment was back on the water taxi. By now it was dark (sun set is about 5:30) so we were able to see the buildings lit up for Christmas. Like
earlier, this ride was accompanied by
running commentary. Unlike last our earlier ride, this boat was a double decker, accommodated about 200 people and had a bar. We saw the sights for about an hour.

We finished the evening with dinner outside (similar to last night) listening to a Latin duo – no Christmas tunes this time.

Did you know…Fort Lauderdale’s canal system is over 300 miles long? Over half of these are residential canals.