Let’s turn that frown upside down! We start our crossover day, where the ship returns to dump the last cruise’s passengers and pick up new ones, excepting about 200 of us who are doing a “back to back” in Fort Lauderdale.
There may have been some messing about on the way home, but we made it!
Firstly, it’s cold - for Florida anyway - but we can’t fix that and anyways a tee-shirt is plenty, we didn’t even bring coats.
Secondly a timetable malfunction (not me!) gives us the wrong timing for the water taxi we intended to take uptown - at 09:00 only the opposite direction runs, so we go to Hollywood instead - flexible thinking fixes that frown! Obvs not THAT Hollywood, this one is in Margaritaville, a pretty good name for any town.
The taxi takes us south from the enormous harbour bridge, on the Intercoastal waterway that runs along a good deal of Florida, between the sand spur so well establish it contains huge developments and the mainland. Here lives an entire water-borne industry of yachting, smart marina housing and hotels.
I always think that referring to Ft Lauderdale as America’s Venice is as insulting to that crazy little island as saying St Petersburg is Russia’s Venice, in both cases they are referencing the canals all around, and it would be far more rational comparing the two great cities with Amsterdam, but what do I know?
Our 45 minutes, passing back past the entire cruise terminal affords a ship geek lots of photo opportunities, and I manage to add a couple to the first sighting list today, including Oddysey of the Seas with its erection, and Celebrity Edge with its Magic Carpet.
It gets better as we pass the container port, where loading MSC Pamela is taking place. Not the biggest ship, but big enough to hold 9200 TEUs, equal to 4600 full-size containers. The cranes are not high enough to load/unload the largest ships as they are directly under the flight path for FLL so cannot be updated. Yet! There’s a booming sustainable energy industry here too.
Disgorging at Margaritaville, we cross over to the boardwalk, which being made of brick is actually called the broadwalk. They have a draconian litter policy and total plastics ban, it’s great to see how this and other measures (no dogs, skateboards, electric anythings) keep the promenade pristine and enjoyable for everyone.
We head first one way then the other for several miles though all sorts of different neighbourhoods. The variations are quite dramatic from low-rent apartments, pop-up eateries and then past a Trump Tower and some others where the Bentleys, Rolls and AMGs are all out playing on a Sunday morning, along with some other odd transports!
Watching our time carefully (extra since we’ve not changed our phones to the right time zone!) we head back, buy some shorts for Hubby and get the taxi back to the harbour.
We’re told that one region contains lots of monkeys that escaped from a now closed-down vivisection establishment, although we don’t see any. Another area has lots of iguanas, which we manage to spot. Alligators don’t tend to use the waterway because it’s too busy, but manatees like the outflow from the power station so there’s around a thousand living close by. We didn’t see any this time.
With some time to spare we pop over the harbour bridge and walk to the beach, not for any reason, just to go there and back, looking at some nice houses as we go. Having missed lunch we are hoping for a shop, but this is America, and we’re not in a shops kinda zone, so we pop into a petrol station and buy an hideous turkey and cheese sandwich, awful cheese slice, awful plastic turkey but surprising nice bread! At least the salted caramel Twix that begged to be bought was gorgeous!!
In need of dollars, we continue to where we know there’s a drive-in bank, get what we need then start the 2 miles back though the port labyrinth to our ship, meaning we’ve clocked up 14 miles today.
A word on US immigration - total opposite of our previous experience - today we just scanned our faces and that’s we’re in America, nothing else to do at all! Didn’t even need passports, ESTAs or anything else. Returning to the ship was equally straightforward.
Although sailaway was scheduled for 16:00 we’re in the pool by 15:30, and by 16:00 on our first mango daiquiri. Delayed by Crystal Edge it’s well past 16:30 before we go and time for another daiquiri, by which time the jacuzzi is our preferred location. We watch as 100a of turkey eagles circle above us. Probably blinded by the new shorts!
After a couple of hours we’re a bit prune-like and decide to brave the cold long enough to get towels and dry off. A glass of champagne and a few nachos on our verandah warm our cockles, until canapés arrive anyway.
We swerved the 150 years of Holland America last first night, so decide to go there tonight, it’s an engaging story of this mighty company, peppered with human-sized anecdotes. It’s a slick, well crafted presentation.
Soon after we’re heading up to deck ten and Tamarind for dinner, where we enjoy a mixture of old and new, the new bits being lobster and prawn pot stickers (har gow) and Thai Basil Szechuan Shrimp and Mango Posset, all yummee!!
There may have been some messing about on the way home, but we made it!
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