Fort Lauderdale Tour: Part One - Coach Tour

We’ve had a great day round Fort Lauderdale and seen some amazing properties in this land of capitalism run riot and of conspicuous wealth (the conspicuous poverty in the US is not visible round these parts!).

We had booked tour round Fort Lauderdale – didn’t expect any significant sights and was right about that – but the whole environment and atmosphere were lovely.  We were driven round the town – population about the size of York (100,000) – and had a stop at the Riverside Hotel, the oldest hotel in Fort Lauderdale.  Look it up on Google to get more information on it.

Then we went on a paddle boat for a 90-minute water tour of the canal and the Intracoastal waterway which runs all up the eastern seaboard of the US from Miami in the south to Virginia in the north.  Some of it is natural while the rest (including the gap through which the cruise ships pass to get to the open sea at Port Everglades) was created by US Army engineers.

The boat trip was excellent and we saw lots of million dollar residences with not much waterside privacy as people like us are snapping cameras at them all day!

Then we dropped off some people at Fort Lauderdale Airport – we would happily cruise from here again as everything is so close together – airport, budget hotels – well budget by Fort Lauderdale standards! – and the cruise port.  The only decision would be as to the best/cheapest air route from Manchester preferably to Fort Lauderdale.  The other place we’re reminded of that’s goo to cruise from is Puerto Rico as you’re one change of flight away from the UK and right next to the eastern Caribbean islands.

We’ve met the loyalty lady on the ship to check about our loyalty upgrade now that we have done 5 cruises with Princess and P&O.  We’re now Platinum class from this cruise onwards and we’ve now got both a ruby and now a platinum pin badge so that we can boast about it!!

We now get free Internet minutes and we get them each rather than per cabin.  It’s 150 minutes for cruises up to 7 nights and 250 minutes for cruises longer than 7 nights, so Elizabeth will be getting a blogging tutorial before her UK cruise with Catherine, so that she can keep up the Atkins’s blogging tradition!

We got on and off today without undue fuss – considering we were re-entering the US from tax havens such as Grand Cayman and druggy places such as Jamaica!  Most things worked fine as we were on ‘back-to-back’ cruises – except that they have billed my credit card at the end of this first cruise and our on board account has now started again from scratch.  I think we have some on board credit this time round, which we didn’t on the first cruise.  I also had trouble with my existing Internet account which had been wiped/suspended but everything now seems to be OK again.

As Platinum members, we’ve now been in the Elite lounge (5pm-7pm) – the Sky Walkers Disco) for a very slightly discounted experience – some money off the “Cocktail of the Day” – something I didn’t realise until I’d ordered something that wasn’t the “Cocktail of the Day”!

Elizabeth predicted that the clientele would improve on this second cruise and, so far, she seems to be right.  Suddenly Brits are noticeable rather than extremely scarce and there are some noticeably smarter individuals around.  Some even know how to ballroom dance, although the only live music to dance to is Latin.  There are fewer fatties and the number of tattooed ladies (and men) has declined.  Sunday night is formal, so that will be the acid test.

We’ve moved across to AnyTime dining to see what that’s like and we’ll know for the summer what each sort of dining is like.  On our first AnyTime night we had Matteo as our waiter – the waiter who was our waiter in 2012!

One fun point – they have a TV channel in the cabins which is effectively the Love Boat Channel – back-to-back episodes on the cheesy 1970s US TV series.  They seem to do back-to-back Los Angeles to Fort Lauderdale cruises with a dose of the Mexican Riviera thrown in for good measure!  There is also much mention of Mazatlán!  The programme makers clearly didn’t pay to use Pacific Princess for the series as there is so much product placement in the show (ship’s name appears in every other shot and the cabins are enormous!) that it would be up before the regulator at home these days.

Sea front drive – very like Ocean Drive in Miami

This is turtle country man – heavily protected by law, so watch your step!  

Part of Fort Lauderdale’s ‘Little Venice’

In the gardens of the Riverside Hotel

Here’s a nice photo of each of Elizabeth and Graeme

And just behind where Elizabeth was standing was this plastic/stone gator.

Do you like the real reptile behind it?  Look closely.

Now he’s come out!

This place is alive with critters, man!  Nearly stepped on this poor blighter and the way back to the coach.

Possible wedding venue, anyone?