Saturday, March 27, 2010

Ft. Lauderdale, Fl

Wow! Spring Break and a nice sunny day in Ft. Lauderdale. The beach is packed and traffic crazy all along the beach drive. The parking lots are filled to capacity and siren after siren keeps trying to get through the traffic. The buses and trolleys that normally run every 20 minutes are lucky to get through in 45 minutes to an hour. But what a beautiful sunny day it is. Bare chested youths in flipflops, roar by with hair blowing in the wind on motorcycles with bikinied babes on back. What a change from the Bahamas and the conservative people there. You do not wear beachwear into the towns and dang near not even on the beaches. You can tell the tourists in the Bahamas because they are in beach wear on the beaches and boats (hmmm guess that’s the same here). The native Bahamians would be embarrassed to see the dress code here. Bikinis and heels walking into the stores and restaurants - a very relaxed dress code exists on the streets. The people watching here is amazing. Wish I’d have brought my camera today – I left it on the boat thinking I was just going shopping.

We waited on the corner near the 7-11 store for 45 minutes to catch the trolley to the shopping center with the Ace Hardware and Publix. On Fridays and Saturdays the trolley only costs 50 cents. We decided to try a place called Joe’s Diner for lunch. Wow! This was the largest burger I’ve had… I think ever! It was very good – grilled onions, swiss, mushrooms, tomato, lettuce on a Kaiser roll and the rest of the food I saw coming to other tables looked quite good too, all at reasonable prices. This is a definite “come back to” place. Then we replenished our fresh produce and waited for the trolley to come back to the shopping center.

While waiting for the trolley at the bus stop with two other ladies, there was a beautiful large black bird perched on the sign, singing his heart out. I noticed a female not far by. I thought, hey, she’s looking for food and opened up a loaf of bread to grab a piece of the crust. As I pitched it towards the bird, the wind caught it and I ended up hitting one of the ladies in the arm with the bread. OOPS! How embarrassing… I told her I was aiming for the bird. She said, “oh, I thought you heard me talking about how hungry I was and were trying to feed me”… Oh my gosh – how embarrassing. She was a skinny little thing too. She nudged the bread that had hit her out for the bird and the female bird came for it. You meet some strange people at bus stops. In this instance – I was the strange person throwing bread at people…

Traffic was definitely grid locked. The trolley driver said it was a combination of spring break and the first nice weekend day in a long time. Seems like everyone has cabin fever – even the native Floridians. He said he’d be at the beach today too with a cold one if he weren’t working and was thinking about heading to the Pirate’s Lair after work to watch traffic go by on the beach LOL!

After putting the food away, I had to jump onto Facebook and catch up with things. It looks like we may be here a couple more days or so before heading up the coast – I think the next stop will be Lakeworth. We’re both quite filled still from those burgers at lunch so it will be a snacking night I think.