Fort Lauderdale

It’s only taken a week, but finally, here’s our trip report from Fort Lauderdale!

After a pretty eventless flight, we landed in Fort Lauderdale and picked up our hire car. We got a free upgrade to a Pontiac Grand Prix GT because they couldn’t find the keys for the car we were supposed to get – sweet! The drive to the Cooke’s house is pretty fast and easy (once you get the directions from Natalie!), but Sibylle wasn’t convinced that I’d remember the route after driving it only once, and so she graciously left her bag at the airport – containing her purse, passport, etc. – to give me more practice on the route. So, soon after arriving and greeting Natalie and Buddy, Sibylle and I drove back to the airport to pick up her bag. Thankfully, the bag was successfully recovered, and the route was successfully cemented into my memory.

We were all relieved to be in bed and slept quite fitfully. The silence is somewhat disturbing after being in New York and sleeping through the sirens and trucks screaming down second avenue.

Day 1: SoBe

After a lazy start to Saturday, we headed out towards South Beach, or “SoBe” as the cool kids call it. We stopped en route at Francos Pizza – Uncle Frank’s pizza restaurant, where we got to meet up with Uncle Frank, Aunt Sandra, and Debbie. (Aunt Sandra and Mom are first cousins – I think – so that makes Sanrda my (and Natalie’s) first cousin once removed, and Debbie my second cousin). The pizza was fantastic – it reminded me of The Pizza Plaza at Boondall which always wins the “Best Pizza in Brisbane” awards.

Next it was on to SoBe! The weather wasn’t the greatest on Saturday so we didn’t swim at the beach, but for us Australians, it was great just to be on a beach! (Though Florida beaches are somewhat different from Queensland beaches.)

We strolled around SoBe’s “Art Deco” district, stopped for ice cream when it rained, and then walked down to the infamous Miami Ink tattoo studio. If one of the famous artists was there then I could have been convinced to get my second inking, but alas they weren’t – and the queue for the guys that were there looked like it was at least a few hours long! So we headed home instead.

Day 2: Hollywood Beach

On Sunday we were determined to make up for our lack-of-swimming at SoBe, so the Cookes took us to their local beach where our swimming need was fulfilled. It was so wonderful to be in the water, though I really miss the waves from Australia! Sammy kept us all busy building a hole with a moat an important engineering experiment, which ended up taking hours (and was fun from start to finish).

I think we all got a little sunburnt, including a little on my freshly shaven head! Note for next time: more suncream in the hair.

Day 3: Kennedy Space Center

The number one thing on Jurgen’s “Florida: To Do” list was to head to Cape Canaveral to visit the Kennedy Space Center, so we designated Monday for that task. Unfortunately, the KSC is close to Orlando, which is about three hours drive from Fort Lauderdale, so Monday morning was a very early start. But it all paid off – there wasn’t much traffic on the road, and we made it up to Orlando in good time.

The Kennedy Space Center itself was a very interesting expedition. They have enough things to see and do there to make it interesting for just about anyone. For the main part of your visit, you jump on a bus which drops you off at three different locations, where you can see different parts of NASA’s space program.

Location one was effectively just an observation tower, from which you could see the two towers that the space shuttle launches from. We also watched a short film which detailed how the shuttle is taken from horizontal to vertical inside the Vehicle Assembly Building, placed onto a mobile launch pad, and then inched along the gravel tracks (that you can see in the photo) to the launch tower at speeds up to a whopping 1 mile-per-hour!

Location two was dedicated to the Apollo space program – the that took Neil Armstrong to the moon. Mainly this was a bunch of presentations showing the build-up to launch, the launch itself (from inside the control room), and then the touchdown on the moon. To be fair, the presentations were totally lame and OTT, but in the true spirit of American showmanship.

The cool part about the second location was the museum – they had the Apollo rocket which was first to circle the moon (and which I’ve stupidly forgotten the number for) disassembled inside a hanger. It was massive! There was also a bunch of other artifacts from the Apollo program on display, such as the NASA combi van astronaut ground transport vehicle, and one of the astronaut’s space suits, which comes in at the pocket-change cost of USD$400,000!

Location three was dedicated to the international space station. This one was probably the newest of the exhibits because it didn’t have the pizazz of the others; worse, the displays didn’t lend themselves well to photographs, so I enjoyed this one the least.

We polished off our KSC visit with a walk around the complex, a visit to the “rocket garden”, plus a brief stop in the Astronaut Hall of Fame. It was an exhausting visit – tied off with another three hour drive to get back home – which ensured a good night’s sleep all round.

Day 4: The Everglades

We spent our final day doing a lot of driving, as it turned out. We wanted to visit the everglades, so we headed out on what we thought would be a twenty minute drive. It turned out to be closer to an hour and twenty minutes. When we got there, we decided to do an airboat tour which whizzed us round the rivers and gave us a close-up view of the wildlife; but at $15/ea for only 15 minutes, it was a wee bit exxy! The park also had a “gator farm” with some massive alligators on display. No touching, kids!

After we were done with the everglades, we decided to finish off our trip with some more beach-time, so we headed back to Hollywood (another hour and a bit’s drive) where we ate on the promenade, then swam again at the beach. Unfortunately we were time-limited, because I could have happily swum for hours!

No complaints for our flight back to New York, though we didn’t get to bed until after midnight which is never good. A trip to Fort Lauderdale is always fantastic because we love visiting the Cookes, and this trip was made even better by the company of friends. Hopefully it won’t be long until we’re travelling again – well, actually, I know it won’t be…