Playful City, USA

Can you guess where I am?  Ft. Lauderdale Beach! We've moved  a little further down the coast to check out more iconic Florida  places and took the opportunity to spend a few hours at the beach. (Big surprise, huh?)

This beach is very different from most of the beaches at which we've spent a great deal of time and the experience, while pleasant,  is not my favorite.  Similar, in a way, to Daytona Beach, it is much more upscale and developed.  There are no dunes left, making the beach accessible from the street, Ft. Lauderdale beach is owned by the city and much more developed in terms of activities and amenities.  Shade (a welcome feature!), picnic areas,  trash cans and even bathrooms are provided to the beachgoer at no cost.  You do have to pay to park, but at $1.75, it wasn't too bad and the lot is right in front of the beach area.

View of the shoreline

Picnic area

View from the parking lot

Deep, deep beach where we watched quite a few large ships move about.

There were lots of water sports available (not that we did any!), but we spent our time watching others take advantage.

Outriggers for rent

Jet skiing on the ocean

Diving boat

Parasailing

This is our shade tree.  With a breeze, it was quite comfortable sitting under it.  The trees here were all coconut producing trees, a detail I didn't notice until we were leaving and saw a coconut on the ground.  Lucky for us, none fell while we sat!

Horsing around as we walked the promenade.

Highway A1A along the beach

You didn't think you'd get to read a beach post without some pictures of birds, did you?  Only what I consider to be scavenger birds were on this beach.

Pigeon

Seagulls

Although we saw a few families on the beach, it was mostly young people and vacationers.  Bear in mind that it is not the peak season right now, so I imagine it will take on very different demographics in the middle of summer or winter.

Ft. Lauderdale seems to be very much a town of the haves and have-nots.  Luxury malls, large homes along the water, row after row of huge yachts in the marinas and the streets are taken over by Jags, Bentleys, Mercedes and Rolls Royces.  But go off the main drags and things are quite different. We've overheard many different languages so it must be quite the melting pot.  Buildings and homes are old and not well kept, yards are not maintained and people are not very friendly.  Many different I don't think I'd want to live here, but many do, with 170,000 people in Ft Lauderdale proper and over 5 million in the metro area which stretches from Boca Raton to Miami.  Not my kind of place, really, but it's another memory and picture in my mind to hold.

Until next time...