The Sunny South # 8: Life's a Boat in Fort Lauderdale

Fort Lauderdale is an urban resort.  That means that any stay here comes with all the conveniences and inconveniences of modern urban life -- and "traffic" ranks pretty high on the latter list.  Not least of the reasons for the traffic problem is all the water around here.

But thanks to an enterprising business, the water has been put to good use.  One of the best tourist services in Fort Lauderdale is the Water Taxi -- which is a bit of a misnomer.  It's really a water-borne version of the "Hop-on-hop-off" tour buses found in so many cities today.  Like those buses, it operates over a designated route with designated stops, through a particular time period (10:00am to 10:00pm daily, approximately every half hour).  Also like the bus tours, this one offers a running commentary on the major homes and other sights being passed.

It works because Fort Lauderdale's nickname, "The Venice of America," isn't just a name.  Like its Italian precursor, this is a city built on land reclaimed from the water.  And like the original Venice, Fort Lauderdale is seamed with miles of canals.  In this town, life isn't complete if your waterfront home hasn't got a giant yacht moored outside, and there are dozens of marinas like this one for those who don't live right on the water.

The map shows the approximate routes used by the Water Taxi tour service, with the leg on the west side going up the New River into the heart of downtown, and the orange line to the south representing a separate shuttle boat that runs down to Hollywood Beach.

Since my ideal of "relaxation" rarely involves sitting still for long, and since yesterday was chilly and windy by beach or pool standards, a day of bopping around from place to place on the Water Taxi was a natural thing for me to do.

More than any other American city I have seen, Fort Lauderdale is a monument to glitzy, garish consumerism.  The houses generally combine the worst aspects of unlimited wealth allied to non-existent good taste.  The gigantic private yachts only make it seem worse.  The commentary on the Water Taxi boats points out certain homes for their astronomical price tags or their unique features, and also singles out one particular yacht.  Here we go.

The commentator jokingly described this house under construction as "the new Terminal 5 at Fort Lauderdale International Airport."

The main channels and canals are lined with hundreds of similar monster homes.

The owner of this massive mega-yacht, the biggest one in town, is apparently dissatisfied with it because a friend has a bigger one, and he wants to get a bigger yacht still, to keep ahead. 

A baby like this goes for something in the range of $250-275 million dollars new, and you can expect to pay 10% of that amount every year for maintenance, upkeep, insurance, crewing, and docking costs -- even before you sail the damn thing one foot away from its dock.  We passed hundreds of similar vessels, just none quite as big as this.  Oh, yes -- the owner?  Steven Spielberg.

No surprise, then, that "detailing" here doesn't mean your car -- it's for your boat.

Once you sail west on the New River into downtown, the picture changes dramatically.  Instead of the waterfront being used to parade plutocratic wealth, it becomes a people place to be shared by everyone -- the Fort Lauderdale Riverwalk.  The main Water Taxi route ends at the beginning of the Riverwalk.  The bright-yellow boat in the first picture is one of the Water Taxi fleet.

Even the lift bridges across the river are artistically decorated, rather than just being painted in the sort of utilitarian shades usually seen on bridges.

These bridges are constantly opening and closing for the taller boats, and the traffic disruption on the downtown streets would be horrible if it weren't for U.S. Highway 1, which passes under the river in a short tunnel.

After a good walk, I stopped for lunch at Briny's on the Riverfront, a classic old indoor-outdoor Florida restaurant.  It's billed as an Irish pub, but the zany assemblage of overhead "décor" is pure Florida.  The fish sandwich here was both delicious and huge.

Walking farther west from Briny's, I crossed the railway tracks and found myself in Old Fort Lauderdale village, a small assemblage of historic houses and buildings grouped around the New River Inn, right at the spot where the town first grew up -- where the railway crossed the river.

Along this portion of the Riverwalk there's more room for trees, shrubs, and grassy patches -- and that means room for urban wildlife, from a cute little 3-cm lizard posing on the corner of a concrete sidewalk slab...

...to two male Colombian iguanas, having a loud and ferocious shoving battle -- no doubt, over territorial rights.  It doesn't look like any biting took place, but their deep-throated growls sounded like they emanated from much larger beasts.

Heading back, I rode part of the way on the Water Taxi's Riverfront shuttle which works back and forth just through the downtown area.  I then walked some more, up onto Las Olas Boulevard which is an upscale -- and very popular -- shopping and restaurant street.  A few years back, I had one of the most awesome pizzas of my entire life at Gran Forno Pronto on Las Olas.

On the return boat ride back to the beach area, the boat stops under the 17th Street bridge, and you get a grandstand view of the cruise ships just beyond the bridge in Port Everglades.  There were seven cruise ships docked yesterday; six of them appear in this picture.

Close by is the 15th Street Fisheries in the Lauderdale Marina.  This popular fish market and restaurant is another stop for the Water Taxi.

The upstairs restaurant is upscale fine dining, with a splendid view of all the boats coming and going out on the Intracoastal Waterway.  The downstairs is an indoor-outdoor casual café/bar environment, with live music Friday through Sunday, and fish swimming around right under your feet -- as you can see through the plexiglass windows in the floor.  They also provide fish food, so kids can amuse themselves by feeding the fish off the dock. 

I came back on the boat for dinner, ate upstairs, and had a spectacular meal of conch chowder (spicy), sea bass with a miso glaze served with mango fried rice and Thai stir-fried vegetables, and capped off with a heavily-loaded Irish coffee!  Either upstairs or downstairs, it's an awesome restaurant and my one true must-do every time I come to  Fort Lauderdale.  Just be sure to bring a jacket or hoodie -- the ride back in the Water Taxi gets a lot chillier after sundown at this time of year.