Our trip to Fort Lauderdale was fun and relaxing. We paddled three times with the Lanakila Iki Outrigger Canoe Club, found several nice restaurants, took in some local “old Florida” history, shopped and enjoyed a beautiful beach. We stayed at the Westin Beach Resort, right on Fort Lauderdale Beach and down the street from a host of restaurants and bars.

The New River through downtown Fort Lauderdale

All of the restaurants along the beach had outdoor and indoor seating. Since the weather was so nice nearly the whole time of our visit, we enjoyed eating outdoors for all of our lunches and dinners. Thankfully, all of the restaurants were amenable to Bill and me sharing meals. The amount of food you get these days in restaurants is astronomical and since we’re both trying to reduce our waistlines, we tend to share meals when we can.

On our first day, we stumbled upon the Casablanca Cafe where we enjoyed several great fish meals, tender beef kabobs and fresh salads with a Mediterranean theme. We noticed that the wait staff was exceptional and the atmosphere was much quieter than most of the raucous eateries on the beach strip.

We dined two times at the more sophisticated Steak 954 restaurant, also on the beach. Our first visit, we really enjoyed the shelled lobster over risotto. We rarely order lobster so this was a treat. Not the cheapest item on the menu but it was worth it because it was so good and sharing it made the price easier to swallow. We enjoyed great wait staff during both visits and enjoyed watching the waves and water as we ate. For our second visit we shared our whole meal again. The waiter was nice enough to even split the chopped salad, which was excellent and the 8oz. filet mignon. They gave us a huge plate of great tasting French fries (thankfully, we didn’t finish them!), and their amazing smoked cauliflower and kale. The veggies were perfectly sautéed with onion and had a subtle smokiness. Even after sharing the food, we were more than satiated at the end of the meal.

Since our room had a refrigerator, we were able to do our usual breakfast thing which consists of me making a smoothie with my portable, one-serving blender using ice, a Naked fruit smoothie drink, rice milk, a banana, and my protein powder/ground flax seed/sunflower seed mixture. Bill purchased yogurt parfaits along with his morning coffee from the Starbucks downstairs.

On one of our jaunts we took a taxi to the Whole Foods store about 4 miles away and got some bananas, rice milk, cereal, juice, etc. to tide us for snacks. Near the Whole Foods was a recommended fast-food-ish restaurant, Pei Wei, which is a sister restaurant of PF Chang’s. The local who recommended it pronounced it “Pee Wee” but our Chinese friend Jubo said it was pronounced more like “Pay Way.” Bill got lettuce wraps and spring rolls and I got a sesame chicken dish which were all very tasty. The food is served deli-style where you order, grab your drinks and sit down with a number on your table. The food was delivered quickly and the staff was more than friendly.

During our stay, we enjoyed three fun and exciting paddles with the Lanakila Iki Outrigger Canoe Club on the Atlantic and the Intercoastal Waterway. See the Outrigger Paddling page for a more complete description.

Neither of us were very familiar with Fort Lauderdale but we were aware of its reputation as a party destination for college students. I have to say that it’s truly a beautiful and exciting city but also one of the loudest cities I’ve ever visited. It ranked right up there with New York City in terms of speed, sound and activity – just on a smaller scale. Nearly every restaurant and store had hard driving, almost frantic music playing. The sounds from the main strip (SR A1A) seemed at times to be unrelenting. Given that it is a major strip, it seemed that in the evening hours most of the vehicles were going up and down the strip more with the intention to be seen rather than to actually get somewhere. Particularly motorcycles without mufflers were very popular as well as beefed up cars and trucks. I guess our distaste of the noise level is a sign that we’re growing older!

The pounding music extended into the shopping district in downtown Fort Lauderdale on Las Olas Boulevard. The stores were very high end and had clothing that, well let’s just say, didn’t catch my fancy. Perhaps if I needed clothes to wear on my 150’ yacht while entertaining guests, holding my tiny lap dog, and toting a martini, then this would be the place to shop! I did mange to find the Fresh Produce clothing store (one of my favorites), which had much calmer music and atmosphere. This gave me a good excuse to linger a bit longer.

Las Olas’ restaurants all looked wonderful, some more expensive than others but all on the high end. Just outside the strip we found an excellent Mexican restaurant called Rocco’s. It was a bit loud but we asked for a table on the porch area, which reduced the bar noise a bit. This was my first time having guacamole made to order at our table and it was great! The only problem was that we ate so much of the guac and chips that we could barely eat the tacos we ordered.

Bill and I took a boat tour on the river and really enjoyed the sights. There were a few green patches where we saw cattle and snowy egrets along the way but mostly we saw huge mansions of the rich and somewhat famous and their massive yachts.

The Water Taxi

On the way back from downtown one day, I took the water taxi back to the hotel and really enjoyed the sights and lightly narrated tour. For $22 you can ride the taxi all day. It goes west, up the New River into town and then goes north and south up the Inter-coastal Waterway for several miles.

Gopher Turtle in Hugh Taylor Birch State Park

Bill and I enjoyed tooling around the Hugh Taylor Birch State Park on bicycles one day. The Park was just a few blocks north of the hotel on SR A1A along the beach. This is one of the few natural areas left along the very developed stretch between Miami and West Palm Beaches. We enjoyed seeing an osprey, mockingbirds, cardinals, blue jays and a gopher turtle as we got a sense of the way tropical south Florida was before all of the development. We intended to make it back to the park to rent a canoe and paddle up the lagoon but ran out of time this visit.

Gardens at Bonnet House estate

Foyer at Bonnet House

While Bill was at his conference, I had the chance to get a taste of “Old Florida” by visiting the Bonnet House estate. This is a piece of property that was given to The Florida Trust by the very wealthy Bartlett family. Located just south of the Birch State Park, it was an understated house amidst several acres of natural areas and gardens. The Bartletts were both artists so the house was filled with whimsy and creativity. Walls and ceilings expertly depicted different motifs, animals and scenes of far away places. Frederick Bartlett’s studio had grand scale north-facing windows and was covered with his beautiful work. Since this was one of ten houses owned by the Bartletts, they used this one mostly for entertaining friends and family. The area formerly used for guest bedrooms now houses a large collection of Evelyn Bartlett’s bright and somewhat whimsical paintings. The property is home to three Costa Rican Squirrel Monkeys – unfortunately, I didn’t spot one during my visit. Supposedly during the 1950s there were over 50 of them there but their numbers have dwindled for reasons I’m not sure of.

We hung out in the warm waters several times and even snorkeled a little but didn’t find much to look at. It’s so rare that I can actually get into the Atlantic so I was really pleased that the water temperature was about 80 degrees – too warm for a lot of avid swimmers. From shore I was able to see schools of fish go by as well as pelicans flying overhead.

All in all, we found Fort Lauderdale to be a fun, clean and vibrant city with a thriving downtown – something so many American cities are lacking these days. The city had a lot more to offer than we had time to explore so we would like to visit again someday. A future visit might entail taking more advantage of the water taxi, more paddling with the outrigger club, paddling in the Hugh Taylor Birch State Park, exploring the park to the south that we didn’t get to visit, renting bicycles to get around town, go snorkeling, taking a tour of the Everglades, taking in a few museums and boogie boarding.